[nehalita]

Mission Mayhem was in the Miami Herald Newspaper . Check it out!

Fifteen teams of high school students gathered in Miramar on Saturday to compete at basketball.

But the actual players were robots designed by the students.

The FIRST Robotics invitational tournament and showcase at DeVry University pit the teams from Central and South Florida against each other in engineering and problem-solving.

''It allows people to channel their competitive juices into something that's also good for academic skills,'' said Julio Torres, president of DeVry, which sponsored the tournament along with the Broward Schools magnet programs.

In January, each team had been given a kit with motors and basic parts. They had six weeks to design, build and program a robot to shoot foam basketballs into nets -- and stop other robots from doing the same.

They brought their inventions to competitions put on by FIRST -- For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. The nonprofit organization uses robotics contests around the world to encourage students to get involved in science and technology careers.

The contests this weekend -- dubbed Mission Mayhem -- in Broward were off-season events that gave the students another chance to put their robots to the test.

On Friday, the contestants had to go back to the drawing board before they could even compete. Rain had flooded their outdoor field and they had to design a new one and move the games indoors. They did it in three hours.

That ingenuity was matched in the contest.

Pine Crest High School's Panther Bot had two net panels raised by a pneumatic mechanism to block opponents' shots. Elliot Brodzki, 17, said it's the only robot his team has seen that has that type of mechanism.

Team member Aaron Lewis said they won the Motorola Quality Award at the 2006 FIRST regional competition because of the robot's strong design.

''It's pretty much a tank without the gun,'' he said.

In one match, the team, after shooting all of its balls, maneuvered the robot onto a ramp in the middle of the field, a task worth an extra 15 points. While the competing robots struggled, the Panther Bot lifted its shot-blocking nets in victory.

In the final eliminations, teams partnered with two other teams to form an alliance. Panther Bot teamed up with the Platinum Dragons from Stranahan High School and The Pink Team from Rockledge High School and Cocoa Beach High School to win the Championship Robot Alliance.

Wolvcat team co-captains Jimmy Bourne, 17, and Frank Azcuy, 16, of Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, said they plan to make a career out of technology.

Bourne will attend the Summer Academy for Mathematics and Science at Carnegie Mellon University this summer, and Azcuy hopes to attend the University of Florida to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering.