Feb 21 2011
Kingswood Oxford School will host the Connecticut State FIRST Tech Robotics Contest on March 5, 2011. Around 300 high school children representing 20 schools will participate in the challenge.
Matt Fleury, Connecticut Science Center’s President and Chief Executive Officer, will inaugurate the event and the contest will be held in the Hewett Gymnasium of the school. Workspaces for the participants will be arranged in Soby Gymnasium.
The challenge for this year’s competition is ‘Get Over It.’ Each participating team has to develop a robot that can remove the batons from holders, move over a platform and finally place them into cups located on the playing arena. The objective of the game is to get a better score than the other alliance of robots. Points can also be scored by making the robots to cross over or park on specific objects found on the playing field.
The winning team of the contest will participate in the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship, which is scheduled to be held in St. Louis in April. Brenda Semmelrock, one of the coaches of KO’s robotics team, has stated that the team that bags the Inspire Award will also be qualified for the World Championship. She added that the Inspire Award is offered to the team that has displayed the ‘most gracious professionalism’ in the contest and also took part in several social service activities.
The coaches of KO’s robotics team are Semmelrock and Donna Balcezak. The team received a state affiliate designation in 2008 and they serve as mentors for several teams across the state. This designation has made them to host the FIRST state robotics contest.