Life after FIRST

[swwrobotics]

Hey guys!

So I'm now a sophomore at Georgia Tech, it's been two years since I've done FRC, and I wanted to share a little competition/class that gives a little look into college and what I've been doing after FIRST. The class is incredibly fun, it's required for all ME majors, and almost has an FRC style to it. You have 8 weeks to build your robot following a "kickoff," you're given a myRIO and a set of motors and actuators for programming sponsored by National Instruments, you have a tight budget, you work in teams to compete against each other, and it's incredibly fun (hm, sound familiar?). This year's competition was Star Wars themed for the new movie, the theme changes every semester, and the rules are attached below if anyone was interested. We had to do things like defeat a Darth UGA dog bone (Our rival school), launch a "millennium golf ball" (just lift a golf ball really high), and torpedo the Death Star with ping pong balls. Our team ranked 1st out of 250 students in qualification rounds, and you can see how we did at the competition in our video! (and a clip of a match at the end)

Here's our robot "Skyhawk," cuz Luke Skywalker and it goes high: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRTM02mv6G8


I'd also be interested if any other college students are up to any crazy/fun stuff of their own!

[hardcopi]

That is an awesome program.

[BBray_T1296]

At my school (U-Texas Arlington), the most similar thing we have is basically an FLL competition required by all ME freshman.

Our team (out of random pairing) consisted entirely of First alumni from one program or another. We were given 6 4-hour class periods to work on the project. We turned ours in halfway through the second class with even the bonus task completed for 120/100 points. Sadly some teams took the entire course time and still finished with B's and C's.

We do have one of the top FSAE teams in the world though and while it isn't quite robotics, building a hybrid racecar with computer-controlled active aerodynamics is a fantastic multi-faceted engineering challenge.