High School Robotics Tournament to be Held Feb. 27 at Southeast

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo., Jan. 28, 2010 -- What do you get when you cross the Discovery channel classic BattleBots with high school basketball?

Answer --  the Cape Girardeau Regional FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Competition. The event is scheduled from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Feb. 27 in the Southeast Missouri State University Student Recreation Center.

The FTC is a competition in which teams of high school students spend months putting together and programming robots to compete in a basketball-like competition against other teams. FIRST coordinates the competition, which is new to this area, but has been around for some time in the St. Louis area. In fact, this year about 1,300 teams from four countries will participate in competitions like the one at Southeast in the hopes of making it to the FTC World Championship in Atlanta, Ga.

Two teams from the Southeast event will earn the opportunity to compete in the Championship Event April 15-17. The city of St. Louis will host the worldwide robotics Championship beginning in 2011 and continuing through 2013, according to Susie Mathieu, a St. Louis FTC coordinator.

The local FTC competition developed from a partnership between the WIRED Initiative and faculty from the Department of Industrial and Engineering Technology at Southeast Missouri State University. This group hoped to support a handful of local schools for the competition in St. Louis.

"Instead, we were pleasantly surprised to have 22 teams volunteer, necessitating an additional competition in Cape Girardeau," said Brad Deken, a faculty member in the Department of Industrial and Engineering Technology. "In addition to these teams, a dozen more from the St. Louis area will be competing for a total of 34 teams."

The competition is open to the public. Morning hours are typically filled with inspections and last minute modifications to the robots. The actual matches begin in the afternoon. Each match involves two alliances each consisting of two robots from two different teams. There will be approximately 36 of these five-minute matches.

Volunteers play a major role in the FIRST organization with more than 90,000 worldwide. Deken said volunteers for the local competition are needed to ensure the competition is successful. Volunteers do not need any special skills, he said.

"Anyone with an interest in technology or our upcoming generation of technologists would be great volunteers," he said.

There are many volunteer positions that cover a broad spectrum of responsibilities, including inspectors, referees, announcers, photographers and various other positions. If you are interested in or have questions about volunteering at the Feb. 27 competition in Cape Girardeau, contact Deken at Southeast Missouri State University at (573) 651-2659 or bdeken@semo.edu.

For more information about the competition, contact Deken at (573) 651-2659 or bdeken@semo.edu.

More information also is available at http://cstl-pti.semo.edu/bdeken/ftc/public/.