This weekend, Comcast Center saw a competition different than its typical basketball games — one among robots.
Fifty-four teams from high schools across the U.S. and Canada competed in the Chesapeake Regional FIRST Robotics Competition, vying for a spot in the international competition in St. Louis. Students had six weeks to build robots that formed “alliances” and played Aerial Assist, a game in which robots served balls, caught them and blocked shots to score points on a mat field on top of Comcast’s hardwood floor.
[ READ MORE: FIRST Robotics Competition ]
The FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition involves using robots to score points by throwing a ball into goals, over a steel truss in the middle of the field and assisting other robots. For a time, the robots operate independently of their operators, and then the high schoolers take over and control their creations.
“It’s kind of like watching a sports event, but with a bunch of robots,” said Malak Abuzgaya, an 11th grader from Whitby, Ontario.
No two robots were the same — some had poles used to block shots, while others featured kicking or catching mechanisms — but each played an offensive or defensive position. The individual robots were not judged; rather, the winning robots were determined as in any other sport: by how many points they scored.
This is the first year this university has hosted the competition, and Darryll Pines, engineering school dean, said it will continue to host for the next few years if the athletic department allows the use of Comcast for the first two weeks of April.
“It started with helping a few high school students, then helping a lot of high school students by bringing them to campus on weekends every couple of weeks to help them with their FIRST robotics entry, and then it became, ‘Oh, one of our teams won the D.C. regional that we were supporting.’ And then we became more involved with the regional competition,” Pines said. “Today we’re talking about, ‘Why is a FIRST Chesapeake regional held here at Comcast Center?’ It’s because of this grassroots effort to reach out to high schools.”
Pines said the event is a great opportunity to recruit potential students, particularly to the engineering school.
“It’s a perfect opportunity for us to have, in one location, over a thousand kids that are the ones we’re looking for,” he said.
Pines said students who participated in the competition will also have the opportunity to win a scholarship after they are accepted to this university.
Andrea Tribo, an ambassador for the event, said the competition inspires high school students to continue their pursuit of education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
“I know for a fact, just looking at the team I came from as a kid, the majority of students that have taken part in FIRST, if they don’t go into a STEM field, they’ll go into something similar,” she said.
Students came from all over the United States, but a majority of the teams were from Maryland, Virginia and Washington. Each team, which varied in size, had unique uniforms — Where’s Waldo?, a team from Ontario, Canada, sported the character’s iconic red-and-white-striped shirt and glasses.
In spite of losing a match, Tres Sims, a 12th grader from Springfield, Va., said he still enjoyed the experience.
“Even when you lose you don’t feel that bad because, I mean, hey, you built an incredible robot; you can’t feel bad about that in the end,” Sims said.
Abby Hall, a 12th grade student from Cocoa Beach, Fl., said she had grandiose expectations for her team’s robot.
“We want to be the best shooter in the world,” she said.
