FIRST Robotics Competition 2014 and IIS

Everyone at IIS is extremely proud of the students we mentored in this year’s FIRST Robotics Competition. If you don’t know about the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), it is the premiere international high school robotics competition started by inventor Dean Kamen in 1991. Over the past three decades, FRC has grown into a massive, global competition. According to the FRC website, this year’s competition, which took place April 23-26, included 2,720 teams from 17 countries, and 68,000 high-school students (grades 9-12) who participated in 54 regional events, 40 qualifying district competitions, and four qualifying championships for a chance to win over $19 million in college scholarships.

The challenge is different every year, but it involves building a robot that can take on that year’s challenge. These robots, which usually weight around 120 lbs., must be built in six weeks from a common kit of parts provided by FIRST. This year, the challenge involved the robots playing with 2 ½ ft. medicine balls; the robots needed to pick up the ball, line up, and shoot it into designated areas. There were six robots on the field at once.

Over the years, IIS has sponsored quite a few successful teams, including last year’s Team 3003 that advanced to the qualifying championships! We work with the Canandaigua Academy every year, and this 2013-2014 season, we had about forty students on the team. While this year’s Team 3003 didn’t advance as far, we are still very proud of what they have accomplished. We can’t wait until next year’s competition!