2004 WPI EBOT Competition (using Robovation robots)

[ahecht]

We are looking for FIRST teams to compete in the 2004 EBOT competition, which kicks off November 4th!

Since 1998, WPI has held a preseason competition every year called miniFIRST, which helped to get the team's high school students excited about the upcoming season, give our mentors a chance to practice mentoring a small group of students, and give everyone practice going through an entire FIRST season, from kickoff to competition, in three or four weeks. For more information on this competition, or to see past year's games, visit http://minifirst.org.

Last year, as an experiment, we opened up the competition to other FIRST teams for the first time. Despite two blizzards postponing the competition, EduRobotics kits that didn't work, and a game that was harder than we intended, the event was still a lot of fun, and I had many students come up to me afterwards telling me how much working on miniFIRST helped them in the regular FIRST season.

This year, we have vastly expanded the program. For the first time, the Worcester Public School District, as well as a handful of other local schools without FIRST teams, will be participating. To signify this movement beyond being just a warmup for the FIRST season, we even have a new name: EBOT Educational Robotics.

Also new this year is that we will be using the 2004 Robovation controllers, so the experience of programming the autonomous modes on these robots in C can be directly tranferred to the big FIRST robots.

While we can't give out game rules until kickoff (just like FIRST), we invite interested teams to look at past years' rules at the miniFIRST site. We can say, however, that the FIRST-like kickoff/short build season/competition format will remain the same.

If any local FIRST teams are intested in participating, I urge them to contact ebot@wpi.edu as soon as possible. Kickoff will be held on November 4th at 4pm both here at WPI and on our website, erobotics.org. The competition itself will be held at WPI on December 4th.

Teams will need the 2004 C based Robovation kit (if you have the old pBASIC kit, contact IFI for infomation on trading in your old controllers), a hobby radio set, and some basic sensors for autonomous mode (we recommend IR reflective sensors for line tracking and IR distance sensors for object avoidance). More information on kit parts and suppliers is at http://erobotics.org/purchase.htm.