First Robotics Competition: Your Chance to Play an Engineer
Your “first” experiences are often not your best ones. In fact, if you’re an average person, those experiences are, more often not, ones you want to quickly forget. For example, remember that first time you tried to ride a bike without training wheels? How, for a second, it all seemed okay until you lost your balance which resulted in a tear-filled day because of a scraped knee? Well, whether you answered yes or no to that question, you should know about this competition where your “first” experiences are ones you definitely do not want to forget. This competition is called First Robotics where you get to earn experiences that are encouraged to hold on to as you become the next best innovator or engineer or both.
What is First Robotics?
At First Robotics, volunteers run and lead multiple programs that involve kids and students aged 6-18. There are programs all over the world and all over the province of Ontario where participating students get to be mentored by professionals while working with teams to achieve new levels of science. For example, one of the biggest programs First Robotics hosts is their First Robotics Competition Ontario where high school students are the participants. These students get 6 weeks to develop new robots with their teams in hopes of winning each year’s unique competition. The First Steamworks Game is the competition they are working on this year.
What exactly is The Steamworks Game?
The basis of the game is simple: You have two teams, two airships, and steam machines that need fueling using the teams’ robots. The more fuel you put into the steam machines, the more fuel your airship uses and the more chances you have of winning. It is highly competitive and highly entertaining. Below is an animated video that portrays how it is done:
Why Purpose Does First Robotics Serve?
I know robotics, science-y games and competitions do not appeal to everyone. They do not even appeal to most kids as they know it involves the maths and the sciences. Having said that, it is those same kids that are still in interested in Star Wars, Transformers and all things science-fiction. It is for that reason that the Dean Kamen, the founder of First Robotics, says that with the First experiences, students learn skills that help them “turn today’s science fiction to tomorrow’s science.”
First Robotics takes pride in their skilled and professional volunteers that help the participants realize that anything they imagine; they can make come true. For further information, visit their website at: http://www.firstroboticscanada.org/.
