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Dean Kamen (Segway and more), Woody Flowers (MIT), and others speaking and introducing the FRC challenge for this season. This is the 20th season of competitio
by ja27 15y ago
Dean Kamen (Segway and more), Woody Flowers (MIT), and others speaking and introducing the FRC challenge for this season.
This is the 20th season of competition. One of the things Dean is promoting this year is building and using a network of FIRST alumni.
Microsoft donated a Kinect for each team. It will be interesting to see how many teams use them and how. UPDATE: they just said that teams can use the Kinect sensor to control the robot in what's normally fully autonomous time. So there's a big incentive for teams to use them.
- melling 15y agoA little "Real Steel" going on here? Some sort of real commercial entertainment venture involving robots of this sort would be a boon to the industry.
- ja27 15y agoThis year's game is a take on basketball. Game description videos are already on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/FRCTeamsGlobal/videos http://www.youtube.com/user/FRCTeamsGlobal/videos
- vyrotek 15y agoWow! A Kinect completely changes the game for the autonomous time. When I participated it didn't seem like many robots used the time to its fullest potential. In fact, many just sat there because they focused on other abilities instead. I wonder if the robot controller supports other languages now.
- dws 15y agoWhether the Kinect is a game changer or a distraction remains to be seen. A well-coded bot can do quite well already in autonomous mode, even when there's contention for a goal (in this case, the 3 point hoop).
- ja27 15y agoIt's like that in FIRST Tech Challenge (the "JV" level of FRC). Unless the team somehow ends up with a kid that loves programming or has FIRST LEGO League alumni (their game is all pre-programmed autonomous), a lot of teams have little or no autonomous mode.