Welcome back to the second year of the FIRST Robotics Competition Smoky Mountains Regional in Knoxville, Tennessee!
WHEN:
March 1st-3rd, 2012
WHERE:
Knoxville Convention Center
701 Henley Street
Knoxville, TN 37902
PARTICIPANTS:
52 teams are registered for this year including:
Thirteen
rookie teams for the second year in a row
Ten
returning second-year teams from last year
None
of last year’s game winners, so the playing field is wide open!
Six teams will receive an invitation to the FIRST Championship in St. Louis, MO:
Three teams from the winning alliance
Regional Chairman’s Award winner
Regional Engineer Inspiration Award winner
Regional Rookie All-Star
USEFUL INFORMATION:
This year’s competition is a week one
event
This year’s competition is a Bag & Tag event
Freight and load-in traffic goes to the South
end of the convention center by the freight elevator. Foot traffic and spectators goes to the North end of the convention center and uses the escalators.
Remember that all
pit materials and robots move into the arena by a freight elevator. Take this into account when designing your pits.
Dress warmly on Thursday. The freight elevator slows down the line moving into the arena and you may spend a while standing in line outside.
Hey I just saw on the team list that Cyber Blue got in - when did that happen? Can’t wait to see you guys again. We’re hoping to be considerably more competitive than last year (which wouldn’t take much <sigh>).
We’re staying at the Crowne Plaza Downtown. It’s about a 3.5 hour drive for us - coming up after school on Wednesday.
If I remember right they are freight elevators. Plus they have escalator. Last year it took my team a good 30 mins or more to get down to the pits with all the tool boxes and what not. So get in line fast and get ready to wait. But the venue is amazing and the seats are amazing (At least last year). Definitely the best regional I have even been too in 7 years. Kinda sad that we aren’t going this year.
I am looking forward to bringing my little band of rookies - team 4306, the Robo Komodos from Franklin, TN - to their first Regional, especially with 1038 in the house! The name of our robot is Problem Child, which pretty much sums it up! See y’all next week!
We have a lot of work/bugs to work out on Thursday, but I have hopes we will be able to play well enough to make eliminations. We’ll have to see though, sounds like some great competition. Very excited to see how the game plays out, and how well we will play. 3 days until we leave.
2200 will be bringing our webcast equipment just in case there is no one doing it, I asked one of our teachers to respond to the email asking for a team to do it, but apparently that never got done, either way we are prepared.
lol
