Visiting the FIRST Robotics World Championship

My family had the privilege of visiting the FIRST Robotics World Festival in April. It is a great experience for anyone interested in robotics. There is much to do, even if you are not competing.

See our pictures by clicking here.

The World Festival is held every year in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia. The best FIRST robotics teams in the world go there, so it is a great place to go to get robot ideas. We saw some really cool robots there!

The pit area is a very busy place during the three days of competition. In order to go into the area that has FTC and FRC teams, you need safety glasses. A team there was providing some for those who didn't have any, but I still suggest to bring some.

While we were in the FLL section of the pits, we stopped by to see the Green GLOOOCS, who we competed with at the VA/DC State Championship. They had brought their papier maché GLOOOC with them, and even got it autographed by Dean Kamen!

Also in the pit areas were several booths, and one of the most noticeable ones was the LEGO Mindstorms NXT 2.0 booth. Some of the developers of the NXT were there, such as Steve Hassenplug. They had some touch sensors and light sensors as give aways! Steve Hassenplug gave us four LEGO bricks printed to look like NXTs!

We went to the FTC section of the pits, and saw our friends from TechBrick. They had to go compete, so we continued on our way. A coach of another FTC team told us that they were also doing a VEX competition, and told us some of the benefits of the VEX competition. That started us looking into VEX, and has resulted in us buying a VEX kit, and purchasing the game pieces.
The robots compete in the main stadium of the Georgia Dome. This year there were six different sections set up - four for FRC, one for FTC, and one for FLL. Competitions run simultaneously in all sections. The FTC and FLL have more than one playing field in a section. They have projection screens set up with close-up video of the fields. This is very helpful, because the seats are so far away from the fields.

If you want another reason to go to the World Festival, you can visit the Atlanta Aquarium and the Atlanta Zoo after walking around the Georgia Dome!

Visiting the World Festival is both very rewarding and fun. I highly suggest going to all robotics fans.

See you in Atlanta 2010!