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The robotic winner and its human creators
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A UTC-sponsored team won the national FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Championship event held April 25-27 in Orlando, Florida. The victorious team from United Technologies Research Center competed against 288 other teams from the United States, Brazil and Canada.
Since 1994, UTC's divisions have sponsored teams of high school students, engineers, teachers and parents to participate in FIRST. FIRST is an annual competition in which teams of engineers and students work for six intense weeks after work and school to design and build a robot.
Twelve of the 15 UTC-sponsored FIRST teams in the United States competed in the 2002 event: seven from Connecticut, two from Florida, and one each from Illinois, Indiana and New York.
United Technologies Research Center’s RAGE team won the national championship. The team consists of 24 high school students from three Connecticut high schools -- East Hartford, Coventry and Rockville -- with 11 team leaders, teachers and mentors.
Pratt & Whitney Florida’s SPAM team, winners of the NASA Kennedy Space Center Southeast regional, took second place in the national competition.
Hamilton Sundstrand’s Buzz team won the FIRST Chairman’s Award, the most prestigious award presented by FIRST for the team’s innovative program idea called “FIRST Steps Tinkertoy Challenge”. The Tinkertoy Challenge uses Tinkertoy construction sets to challenge the minds of elementary school aged children and spark their interest in math and science. The Buzz team ran a pilot program among a dozen elementary school classes in 2001, and FIRST is considering a pilot program of its own in 2003.
Aces High, a team sponsored by Hamilton Sundstrand and involving Windsor Locks and Suffield, Conn., high schools won the Delphi Driving Tomorrow’s Technology Award, given for elegant and advantageous machine design.
"Building robots that can dunk a basketball brings technology to life in a way that excites and challenges kids, and maybe even awakens the engineers in them. Ultimately, that's what we hope to do," said John Cassidy, UTC's senior vice president for science and technology. "The future of innovation by United Technologies, our nation and our world is as bright as the inquisitive young students who will someday take up the challenge so long as they are encouraged and prepared to do so."
Founded by renowned inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen, FIRST seeks to "excite more young people about the accessibility, fun, and importance of science and engineering."
