FIRST Over For WRONG 1430

[russell]

Well I am sad/happy to announce that team 1430 (along with all the other Alaskan robotics teams that I know of) will no longer be participating in FIRST. Obviously I will miss going to the PNW regional and seeing all the people I have interacted with here. However we have run into issues with funding, and have found a solution. Most companies in Alaska are not terribly interested in funding a team to go compete in Oregon. Even if someone in Oregon was interested in their product, they for the most part could obtain it cheaper from someplace other than Alaska. Additionally travel has always accounted for more than 40% of our teams budget just to send the six members we could afford to spend.

In order to solve these problems, the Alaska Robotics Education Association (AREA, a group which coordinates robotics education within Alaska including legoleague, and FIRST) is creating an "Alaska Open" robotics competition. They are still finalizing the details, but the competition will as its name implies be open. There will be no hundred page rulebooks, no ship dates, no ridiculous (though I admit necessary for a competition the size of FIRST) rules, etc, and it will be held outdoors, right here in Anchorage. As things stand now it will attempt to promote actual autonomous robotics by giving incredible time penalties for teleoperation, however teleoperation will always be allowed in order to allow even new and inexperienced teams to participate. The idea is that in order to save money and increase processing power the robots will be based around PCs running Linux. The robots will also have to compete outdoors on a preset date regardless of weather. The competition will require the robot to navigate a dirt trail through the woods at a local park, locate some object (a "downed pilot"?), and probably doing something once it reaches the object, perhaps retrieving it.

Overall teams should be able to save between 20 and 60 percent (depending on how much they have spent in the past and how sophistocated htey want to go now) on materials costs, and very close to 100% on travel. We will also be doing more complex work, and have more time and less restrictions under which to do it.

For those of you who are familiar with it the general format of the competition should be similar to a scaled up version of the Seattle Robotics Societies RoboMagellan contest.

Russell
President WRONG