WPI announced a new college level robotic competition called RICC (Robotics Innovation Competition and Conference).
"[RICC] is designed to attract those students that were raised on FIRST, BEST, and BotBall and are looking for a new and different robotics challenge in college.
Unlike many robotics competitions, the RICC is meant to be a well-rounded event: not only must students design and build a robot, there will be a business and marketing component of the final deliverable."
Sounds pretty interesting, and definitely one of the easier-to-enter college level competitions, compared to the DARPA Grand Challenge and other large-scale competitions.
ohh no . . us college mentors already have too much on our plates as it is . . .
no but really this looks cool and fun.( and it might be a way of not getting those “why are you doing high school competitions” looks when we talk about robotics.
I can see where I might be interested in this but the VRC already has a college division. Since the robots in the VRC are built out of VEX it is cheaper, also I know that I wouldn’t want to have to help mentor kids and build a robot for FRC and then turn around and build another robot. We would be doing almost twice the work.
Since when is building robots work? I don’t know about anyone else, but when the FIRST season is over, I can’t wait for the next one to start. Now maybe we don’t have to wait so long
Of course, now WPI has to come up with a robotics competition for POST College peeps. I want to be able to come out of retirement for a triumphant return to the control sticks.
while this is true, and we are participating in this, it would be nice to participate in a college level competition where we are not building robots from a strict list of parts (ie: vex only components)
That’s why Botball created Beyond Botball. Beyond Botball is for people who have graduated from Botball. One of these years I’m going to get my act together and create an entry. Sadly Beyond Botball only happens at the national conference.
Wow, this sounds interesting. I like the additional marketing component, although I think that it does have some relatives in the FIRST world. I’m excited to see where this goes.
Just a heads up to everyone, registration is now open (and remains open through September) and all the rules and guidelines were released a couple weeks ago. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions – I’m both a FIRSTie and an RICCie http://ricc.wpi.edu/
I don’t know about anyone else, but when the FIRST season is over, I can’t wait for the next one to start. Now maybe we don’t have to wait so long