Tuesday, January 24, 2012

FIRST Robotics Competition Kicks Off: IIS Prepares to Hoop It Up

It’s that time of year again: early January means the annual FIRST Robotics Competition has kicked into full gear. With teams formed, sponsors on board, and mentors eager to assist, the first big event of the season occurred on January 7: Competition Kickoff!  As experienced competitors know, that’s the day when we finally find out what, exactly, we’ll be competing at. Just in time for the return of the NBA, this year’s contest is called Rebound Rumble, and it’s just what it sounds like: a basketball game.
In future editions of this blog, we’ll take a closer look at how the 2012 FRC is unfolding. Today, though, we’ll learn more about Industrial Indexing System’s involvement and history with the contest, and a bit more about the contest itself. One of the great benefits of the in-depth knowledge provided by years of experience is the opportunity to pass it on, and there are many involved in the FIRST Robotics Competition who take up those reins, offering an unprecedented combination of education and fun to thousands of kids, nationwide. From the FIRST organizers themselves, to sponsors like Xerox and J.C. Penney, to mentor groups like IIS, we all get to have a little fun ourselves, while serving our community in one of the best ways possible.
Dating back seven years, IIS has been contributing time and expertise to FIRST Team 1559 at the Victor Senior High School in Victor, NY (from 2005 to 2008) and FIRST Team 3003 at Canandaigua Academy High School here in Canandaigua, NY (from 2009 to 2012), helping students in areas from marketing and promotion, to electrical systems, to drive train mechanics. Of course, our knowledge of robotics comes in handy as well. Working with students with several years of competition experience under their belts, as well as first timers to FRC and to robotics, we view the commitment of the team members as an inspiration to everyone. Beyond school-night commitments during the week, teams even come in on Saturdays to work on their robots!
Stay tuned for more information on the competition and the team! Fellow competitors or past participants, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out via the comments, our Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

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