UNH Hosts FIRST Robotics Competition This Weekend

Submitted by the University of New Hampshire: 

The University of New Hampshire’s Lundholm Gymnasium will buzz with balls and goals March 6 and 7, 2014, but not the usual basketballs and hoops. Instead, robots powered by teenage controllers will take on each other in the District FIRST Robotics Competition. UNH will host more than 1,000 high school students from nearly 40 team from New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in the competition that’s been called a “varsity sport for the mind.”

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition pits teams of high school students, mentored by professional engineers, against each other for a shot at the national championships and millions of scholarship dollars. Each team has six weeks to build a robot that will meet the challenge of the competition’s game from a common kit of parts. This year’s game is called Aerial Assist (watch it in action).

“The students who participate in the FIRST Robotics Competition are not only building robots, they are building character, self-respect, and relationships with their peers,” said Dean Kamen, president of Manchester’s DEKA Research & Development, who founded FIRST in 1989. “Winning the game is fun, but the importance of FIRST is that you’ll get much more out of it than you put in, and it’s going to change the rest of your life.”

At the UNH competition, which is free and open to the public, high school teams will benefit from the mentoring, volunteer support, and inspiration of UNH faculty and students, including some former FIRST competitors. Representatives from some of UNH’s most impressive STEM-related student projects, like the LunaCats, the Precision Racing Team, and SeaPerch underwater robotics, will be on hand to meet and mentor the FIRST competitors.

“This is a great opportunity to promote STEM education and to feed the STEM pipeline,” says Brad Kinsey, professor of mechanical engineering and a veteran FIRST judge. “When he started FIRST, Dean Kamen said he wanted kids to get as excited about technology as they do about sports. That resonates with the mechanical engineer in me.” Kinsey will serve as judge co-advisor for the UNH event, helping the many judges make decisions on the awards, which are both technical and non-technical.

In addition to Kinsey, other UNH faculty will assist as mentors, judges, and referees. UNH’s College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, which is coordinating much of the competition, will host a reception and campus tours in collaboration with the Office of Admissions.

A week prior to the UNH event, Feb. 28 and March 1, 2014, Nashua High School South hosted the state’s other regional championship.