FIRST Community,
I would like to formally announce the inaugural year of the Robo Showdown - an Offseason Competition hosted by National Instruments during our annual user conference, NI Week, in beautiful Austin, Texas.
Details:
$300
August 5-6
Austin Convention Center
Hotel rooms for $99/night (sleeps 4)
T-shirts
Rule changes TBD but will definitely include longer Autonomous or higher point values during Autonomous
~10 matches per team plus finals
No team count limit (we have an entire room in the convention center)
AND as part of attending you will be able to go to the Exhibition Hall to see other types of robots, vision applications, and lots of other fun demos for free! Mentors will be able to pay an extra fee to attend the technical training sessions (cost TBD). Attendees will also be encouraged to watch the Keynote Thursday morning by Dr. David Barrett from Olin College on robotics.
Email me with questions or to pre-register! More info to come soon!
Thank you for posting the thread, Steph. I am really looking forward to having an off-season in Texas and it’s really cool that it is being sponsored by National Instruments during NI Week. Thank you to NI and thank you to all the folks who are planning (and will plan) to volunteer to help make this a fantastic and successful off-season event to participate in.
This might be a fun and helpful website to browse for more information about Austin, in general. (Please don’t let this confuse you readers regarding the info/website that will be put up at a later date specifically developed for the Robo Showdown. It’s just meant to give you a little view into our world here in Austin.)
Registration will be up from May 18 - June 24th ( I just checked with our events guy) but again no limit to the number of teams that can come so no huge rush to sign up day 1!
I can definitely say yes to that. If Stephanie answers just consider my ‘yes’ a strong 2nd! We are still organizing that aspect of it but if you know you are interested in volunteering, let the committee know through Stephanie for now.
Hi teams!
You can now register for Robo Showdown! Details are below or checkour the webpage (still a work in progress) at ni.com/roboshowdown!
Registration:
Go to www.ni.com/niweek and click on “Registration Page”. Then click on “Sign Up Now”.
Fill out contact information
When prompted for a registration code enter FRCleader
Complete registration
Registration options for Leaders and Team:
1. Team only (no leader at the showdown): $300.00
2. Leader only (full conference access): $300.00
3. Team and Leader with Robo Showdown access only: $300.00
4. Team and Leader (leader with full conference access): $500.00
A confirmation email will be sent to you after registering.
Instructions for your team registration will be included in the confirmation email. Please forward to your team.
Can’t wait to see you there! Email us at [email protected] with any questions!
Team 2158 will be attending and we are looking forward to it! Have there been any other forms of advertisement to FRC teams about this event besides this post? I know flyers were passed out at the Dallas and Lone Star regionals, but I’m sure they could have easily been lost by teams. To make sure that everyone is aware of how to register, it would probably be a good idea to contact the area team sponsors directly.
Also, is there a publicly available list of the teams who have signed up already? I’m very curious to see all the teams that are planning on coming.
We don’t have the list of teams attending yet but it’ll go up soon.
As for advertising, emails have gone out to every team in Texas, LA, Mexico, NM, CO, OK, and maybe another state… Any other suggestions?
Registration deadline has been formally set at JULY 1!
It also looks like NI and THSP might be jointly sponsoring teams to compete (i.e. pay for the registration fees) - more to come soon or email me with any questions!
Unfortunately it sounds like 148 will be unable to attend. It isn’t really feasible for our team to attend both this event and IRI due to their close scheduling. Even though this event is muuuuuuuuuch closer, our students put a lot of pressure on us to attend IRI, so that is where we’ll be.
Hopefully a few of us will be able to stop down and see how it turns out!
-John
Yeah, I wondered about that after reading that you guys are attending IRI. I’m glad the team is attending IRI this year, though, and hope you all have a great time and help stir up some great competition!
It would be awesome if some of you could come stop by. The teams that participate in the Showdown would love that, I’m sure.
–
It’s difficult to get a new off season off the ground in an area of the country that doesn’t typically do off seasons. I’m sure in a few years, we’ll all look back at this effort as a huge learning curve for the teams and for a corporate sponsor that is daring to jump on in and take this on, esp. in the middle of NI Week.
If anyone wants to volunteer and would like to know some of the positions we have available, please feel free to contact me via pm. We’d love to have you on board.
If you’re anywhere remotely close to Texas, you should come compete because A- this competition is going to rule, and B- there’s so much fun stuff to do in Austin!
We are still organizing that aspect of it but if you know you are interested in volunteering, let the committee know through Stephanie for now.