Originally Posted by sanddrag (Post 976805)

Is anyone familiar with how these grants apply to VEX rookie teams? What exactly does it cover, and for what amount?

Originally Posted by Mark Leon

Each year the Robotics Alliance Project awards hundreds of registration scholarships to school robotic teams across the country. These awards are selected out of hundreds of proposals through an intensive agency wide review process. Last year over 400 registration scholarships were awarded to Teams for BOTBALL, BEST, FIRST, NURC and VEX. NASA will again conduct the Robotics Competition Registration Proposal Process as it has over the past decade. NASA is currently in the process of selecting an organization to address our requirement to inspire students in the arena of medium scale autonomous and remote controlled robotics competitions. NASA's intended outcome with this requirement is to generate a larger and very capable robotics engineering workforce. The Robotics Outreach Competition (ROC) Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN) has been issued to meet our requirements in this area.

This year the Robotics Competition Registration Proposal Process is designed to select awards for the winner of ROC-CAN. Unfortunately the organization to administer this opportunity has not yet been selected. Your proposal will be ranked with hundreds of other similar proposals. The highest ranking proposals will be given preference for awards. If your proposal is awarded and your proposal falls within the scope of the ROC winner, then your registration cost will be covered for the requested event. If the event is full you may transfer the award to another event inside of the ROC. If your proposal does not fall within the scope of the ROC winner NASA apologizes that we will be unable to award you a scholarship for your requested competition at this time, with one caveat. That caveat being at NASA's discretion we may choose to award registration scholarships for some of the winning proposals. The number and type of proposals that will be awarded will be limited by the scope of NASA's existing procurement mechanisms. If such an opportunity becomes available for you NASA will contact you. NASA will continue to sponsor other complementary robotics competition activities to insure that our future needs can be met.

Originally Posted by Billfred (Post 976811)

It appears that the grant covers one event registration regardless of competition chosen.

That said, let me make sure I'm reading this correctly:



Let me make sure I've got this straight:

-NASA is soliciting grants for all robotics competitions.
-NASA has not selected an organization to stage the competitions that they will support, but will select one organization.
-If your competition's organization is selected and your grant is approved, you get the money.
-If your competition's organization is not selected, then your grant is not approved...but NASA may still be able to support you depending on their procurement rules.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing--as a taxpayer, I'm glad NASA is examining the best use of its resources--but I'm also trying to make sense of the new language included in this year's announcement.

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman (Post 976845)

I am asking someone in the know like Dave Lavery to post in this thread and verify Billfred's assessment.

It seems clear that there will be no Regional Challenge grants this year, which makes sense, since FRC has not been named as a ROC winner, and they can't specify grants specific to any one robotics competition. A natural question would be then - does NASA expect to fund additional Program Growth and Sustaining Grants to make up for the removal of the Regional Challenge grant funding?

What is most perplexing to me is that the language of Mark Leon's message constantly refers to a singular ROC "winner" that is yet to be determined; however, it is mentioned how in past years, teams from a variety of robotics competitions such as FIRST, BotBall, BEST, VRC, NURC, etc. have received NASA grant support. Is that changing? I'm sure teams who participate in these robotics competitions would appreciate some *official* enlightment regarding the decision status and nature of this new "ROC-CAN" selection process and what it potentially means for them. Getting a general idea of when the official ROC selection will be finalized would also be a plus, if such information is available.

Originally Posted by DeepWater (Post 976882)

As far as I can tell, probably for contracting reasons, NASA is trying to not play favorites with FIRST. No "Program Growth" grants this year that have historically been FIRST specific, no requirement for grant award winners to submit a Chairman's Award this year, again FIRST specific, etc. This year's NASA grant application seems more generic and open to all the major robotics competitions than I remember in the past.

Originally Posted by Milestone ROCM-G3-O3

Exercise robotics Competitions that utilize Robot weighing over 40 Kilograms and with a volume greater than 0.8 cubic meters

Originally Posted by ROCM-G2-O10

Require high school complete project with a set of parts with in a set time period of at least 1 month but not to exceed 2 months.

Originally Posted by ROCM-G2-O6

Exercise robotics Competitions that generate and average of 20 students or more per team

Originally Posted by ROCM-G1-O4-R2

Develop Competition that will develop skills in computer animation

Originally Posted by ROCM-G5-O10

The competition season should officially begin no sooner than 1 month after all High Schools have begun their high school year.

Originally Posted by gblake (Post 976910)

Finally this statement at the end of this RAP page puts the nails in the coffin for me. "Demonstrate at least $6,000 of existing corporate or community funding,"

I will be completely flabbergasted to learn that any single team in a program outside of FRC requires both that sort of sponsorship, and needs a NASA grant to pay registration fees. I can see a group of several teams from a single location needing that sort of money; but not just one. However, I might just be ignorant of other expensive programs.

Originally Posted by JesseK (Post 976911)

It costs a lot more than simple registration to run an FRC team: forget about all of the buttons, shirts, pit demos, and supposed 'nuance' things that seem frivolous to the robot itself. FRC still costs $12k assuming the regional is local (30 miles, no overnight stays), the KitBot is used, and no major tools are purchased. Teams have done it for less in the past, but I'd almost bet my collection of FRC coach badges that they prioritized of cost over all else in the design process.

Originally Posted by ROCM-G5-O10

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod (Post 976914)

FRC doesn't qualify for this since the official competition season opened with registration on September 30.

Originally Posted by JesseK (Post 976915)

I don't get it. What part of FRC registration says that the official competition season has begun?

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod (Post 976917)

Although, I suppose a semantical argument might be the dates of the first competition event and the last event. That'd have to be published in a FIRST official document in those matching terms I suppose, but it'd be splitting hairs.