FTC at SBW, Day One

    Today, I went to the "Red Stick Rumble" to support my colleagues and students who were participating in the FRC challenge - and to learn a bit more about what I'm getting myself into by starting an FTC club at my school.  There has been an FRC - or First Robotics Challenge club - at my charter school for two years now, and the students have come a long way since I first started visiting their sessions when they started up.  Today's challenge involved the robots maneuvering what looked like giant exercise balls around a course set up in the gym of a Baton Rouge high school, throwing said balls through goals and over obstacles, and trying to block competitors from doing the same.  It reminded me of a robot version of basketball mixed with soccer, and it was entertaining watching these hundred pound robots whizzing around the court, playing this hybrid sport.
    One thing I noticed about the competitors, however, was that most teams had a litany of sponsorships listed when they were first introduced, while our school had none whatsoever.  Clearly, part of the challenge of establishing our teams will be to seek sponsorship, then broaden that sponsorship.
    Our students handled themselves very well, and I was happy and impressed to see what they had accomplished and learned moving in to their third year participating in this competition.

    After cheering on our existing team, I went to the cafeteria to learn more about FTC, or First Tech Challenge, which is what I have been recruited to start at my school.  I was pleased to find robots of a more modest size then those competing in FRC - but no less sophisticated.  I was expecting Lego Mindstorms kits or simple remote-controlled robots, but was pleased to find that the robots were larger and the course was more interesting.  Last year, I helped my son win a gold medal at the Science Olympiad regionals in a robotics competition called "Robo-cross," which called for using a remote control to guide a robot through a small course where a small amount of objects were picked up, then placed in a bucket.  I expected this competition to be similar, but found it to instead be more rigorous and therefore more interesting and entertaining.
    School teams competed four at a time, with two teams at a time placed randomly in alliance with each other, so each round had a red team and a blue team.  When a round began, the robots had to move autonomously - according to directions programmed into their "brains" - for the first thirty seconds of the round.  Then, the robots were switched to "tele-op" mode, where they were controlled by "drivers" wielding USB game controllers.  During this stage, robots were guided through picking up blocks, then putting them in bins on either side of a large scale, and had to keep an eye on keeping the two sides balanced.  The last thirty seconds of this mode was called the "end game," and the robots had unrelated tasks that they had to accomplish, such as raising a flag by winding a lever, or attaching themselves to a pull-up bar and raising themselves up.

    Needless to say, I came away from today's event feeling excited about getting our school's FTC club started.  I introduced myself to a few of the teachers and volunteers leading existing FTC clubs, and came away with some great advice for getting started.