FLL and FTC news
Jason Kyle
Firstly congratulations to the FTC teams who represented New Zealand at the FTC World Championship in April!
5110 Mechanical Monkeys Reloaded – Finalist for the Rockwell Collins Innovate Award.
5145 Middle Earth Masters – Ranked 41 out of 64 world class teams in their division.
These achievements were particularly noteworthy given they hadn’t actually competed at a Ring It Up event prior to the World Championship.
FIRST Championship wrap movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNGzTg53zDY
We’ve opened registration for Nature’s Fury the 2013 FLL Challenge. There are some changes to the competition and qualifiers this year which hopefully will make things easier for all involved. Essentially there is now only 1 official FLL event in NZ, the Championship. http://kiwifirst.org/events/fll-events-in-new-zealand
Outgrown FLL? Check out FIRST Tech Challenge!
http://kiwifirst.org/robotics-programs/first-tech-challenge
http://kiwifirst.org/how-to-enter/start-a-ftc-team
We have a couple of team slots still available for our NZ competition on 31 August. In case you’re wondering how FTC differs from VEX here’s a quick rundown and feel free to contact me for additional info as I have experience mentoring teams in both competitions:
· Both are 2 on 2 alliance interactive games played on a 3.6m x3.6m field.
· VEX is limited to parts manufactured by VEX Robotics.
· FTC uses both TETRIX and MATRIX robotics “base” robotics sets.
· FTC permits the use of raw materials in addition to robot set parts. You can 3D print parts if you like.
· VEX competitions are well established in NZ having started in 2009.
· De-scoring permitted in VEX games and penalised in FTC games.
· More emphasis on autonomous period in FTC @ 30sec duration (VEX 15sec).
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Best Regards,
Jason Kyle, Kiwi FIRST | ja...@kiwifirst.org | +64(9)379 4836 | +64(21)672535 | http://kiwifirst.org