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Oklahoma students to bring robots to lifeJan 08, 2011 (Stillwater NewsPress - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- STILLWATER, Okla. -- Oklahoma teams competing in the 2011 Oklahoma FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, Robotics Competition gathered in Stillwater Saturday. Fifty teams from Oklahoma will compete in the annual event involving 45,000 high school students from around the world. The teams have six weeks to design and build robots to meet this year's engineering challenge. The Oklahoma teams met Saturday at the Wes Watkins Center to hear kick-off speeches, be shown the 2011 game field for first time and participate in a robot quick build session. They received a common kit of parts made up of motors, batteries, a control system, a mix of automation components and no instructions. The Thunderstorm Robotics team competing this year is made up of students from Stillwater High School, Stillwater Junior High, Perkins High School, Sunnybrook Christian School, a few students who are home-schooled and one from Enid. It will be the team's fourth year to compete, event mentor Ron Markum said. Markum works in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Oklahoma State University. He said the competition is specifically designed to push students to reach out to professionals in fields they may pursue. "It's like a sixth-grade football player going to NFL camp," Markum said. "They get to play with the pros in these fields." All the Oklahoma teams will bring their robots to the Regional FIRST Competition March 17 through March 19 at Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City. The robots will be judged on effectiveness, power of team strategy and collaboration and determination of students. "It gives them a unique opportunity to see what a career in science or technology looks like and gets them motivated," Markum said. OSU President Burns Hargis, Governor-elect Mary Fallin and Janet Barresi, incoming State Superintendent of Public, spoke to the competing Oklahoma students Saturday morning. The students then watched a live NASA video broadcast with other students and hear from inventor and FIRST founder, Dean Kamen. Kamen founded FIRST in 1989 to inspire future generations to become involved in science and technology. Visit www.usfirst.org for more information about FIRST. To see more of the Stillwater NewsPress or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.stillwater-newspress.com. Copyright (c) 2011, Stillwater NewsPress, Okla. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. |