South Bay Team Eager to Show Mettle in Robotics

Members of Beach Cities Robotics award-winning high school robotics team www.bcrobotics.org have roughed out plans for an upcoming international competition.

(PRWEB) January 3, 2004 --Members of Beach Cities Robotics award-winning high school robotics team www.bcrobotics.org have roughed out plans for an upcoming international competition.

On Saturday, January 10, 2004, the state's FIRST robotics teams, hundreds of others throughout the country, and growing numbers of international teams, will get the guidelines for the 2004 competition via the NASA cable channel broadcast, and then pick up a kit of mechanical parts to immediately begin designing a homemade robot to perform a list of tasks.

Team 294 has students from two rival schools, Redondo Union High and Mira Costa High, on one robotics team. In case you missed it the team placed second in the Southern California Regional Competition last year while also winning the Engineering Inspiration Award and the Johnson and Johnson Sportsmanship Award.

This is the teams eighth season in the program. They won the 2001 Regional and National Championship.

Several senior members enrolled in college engineering, five high school students attended an El Camino Junior College welding class, and both student captains attended Lego Mindstorm teacher training as the only high school students sponsored by the RoboEducators for that program.
About 900 teams across the country, plus teams from Brazil, Canada, Great Britain, and Mexico, participate in the annual FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology www.usfirst.org) robotics competition.

Last year, FIRST required participants to build a robot that could move and stack large rubber boxes.

"The interesting part isn't what we do but how we do it," said RUHS sophomore Marygrace Barron, co-captain of Beach Cities 25-member team. "It's great that we end up with a robot but the best part is seeing how it's done and participating in that process."

The team met weekly all year long teaching summer robotics daycamps, doing exhibitions, attending robotics classes, mentoring Lego League teams, helping to put on the South Bay Lego League Tournament, learning new skills and preparing for the next season.

After learning the rules for the 2004 game, members will work every weekend and three times a week because they have just six weeks to finish the robot and ship it to Phoenix for their first regional competition. The team will be competing at the Southern California Regional Friday and Saturday, March 26-27, 2004, located at the LA Sports Arena. This is the largest high school robotics competition in California with over 2,000 students and 60 US High Schools. The competitions are spirited, high-tech spectator sporting events pulsating to rock music, a vision of wild WWF style costuming, with time clocks, referees and cheerleaders. The competition is free and open to the public.

During the build period the team members also build a full practice field for Southern California teams, investigate competing teams, promote their team to the public, raise money for travel, program the robot, open their doors to the public every Sunday 2-4p during the build season, update their web with the latest news and pictures, mentor other FIRST Robotics teams, and more.

"I volunteer with the program because I get to have as much fun as the students," said Mark Miller, the rent.com Director of Information Systems who coaches the team along with self-employed business manager LeRoy Nelson, and other engineering mentors including Northrop Robotics Engineer Dr. Rick Wagner.
Major sponsors for Beach Cities Robotics include Northrop Grumman Space Technology, Raytheon and Rent.com.

Beach Cities Robotics Team 294 welders Ryan Tupper, Ricardo Salgado and Marygrace Barron show off their new Hoodlum welding helmets.
Available in color and 200dpi -- www.bcrobotics.org/hoodlum.jpg

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