This page explains about the two competitions students may choose to compete during the year. First Tech Challenge and IT-Olympics.
There are two objectives: SUMO and Live Challenges.
SUMO involves making a robot that will autonomously battle another robot in a 4 inch ring.
Constraints: must fit in 1ft by 1ft bx, must be under 2 lbs., must be made out of specific kit parts.
Live Challenges involve using your brain to problem solve on the fly. There will be a sheet saying you need to build a robot to do "this" and you have only 2 hours to build and program it.
Previous challenges have been: monkey on a line, maze, dragster, ball sorter, city navigator, zip line reset button, ball launcher, segway, blue tooth controlled car, and a rube goldberg machine to move a ball.
Corning has been competing in IT-Olympics since it first began in 2007. Check it out on the web: www.it-adventures.org
2. First Tech Challenge (FTC) is a nation-wide competition with state qualifying matches held January-March; with Finals in April. Kick off event is held at the University of Iowa in September where the new year's game is announced.
FTC has a game of some type that the robot has to play. There are four teams on the field at once, two different alliances made of two teams each.
For the 2009-2010 Year the game was called Hot Shot. Robots had to play ball and could score in 4 ways. Opening a ball shoot, scoring in low goal, shooting into high goal, or shooting into off-field goals.
There were two objectives this year. Autonomous and Driver Controlled.
Autonomous: the robot had to run a program and open ball shoots or score into the goals.
Driver Controlled: the robot had to respond to PS2 controllers and score in the goals.
Corning participated at the Wisconsin and Minnesota qualifying events as we were snowed out from the Iowa qualifying event. This was the first year for our team to enter this competition. Check out FTC on the web: www.usfirst.org.