The finale of the seven week regional educational robotics program was the Florida Regional Botball Tournament for the tech savvy high school students. The competition needs the teams to build autonomous robots, which have to survive a Botball game.
The rules for the botball game change every year and hence is very interesting for the viewers who watch the robotic players in the game. The organizers at the University of North Florida (UNF) declared that the game was conducted in the University campus on 12th March with fourteen teams participating. Twelve teams were from Florida and included teams from high schools such as Landrum Middle, Robert E. Lee, Nease, Fletcher, Douglas Anderson, Bishop Kenny, while the other two were from Zimbabwe.
This event provided a splendid opportunity for both students and teachers to acquire practical experience with robotics equipment and as this kind of sophisticated and state of the art equipment are not normally accessible to pre-college students, this would prove to be a wonderful opportunity for them. The scores are given not only based on performances but also on the quality of the on-line documents prepared by each team. This event has been hosted by UNF from 1997 onwards, funded by the UNF College of Computing Engineering and Construction.
This year’s official presenter of the Botball Educational Robotics Program was the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics, which links people and technology via robotics and is a non profit organization. An announcement was made to the effect by the UNF’s Division of Continuing Education, that they had won two $500,000 contracts from Workforce Florida for launching two Employ Florida Banner Centers, one for Creative Industries and one for Financial and Professional Services. During the next three years, an added amount of $1million would also be given for both the Banner Centers.
Source: http://www.kipr.org/