Volunteering at FIRST

Part of the Iron Range Engineering program requires participating or volunteering in the community. Two FIRST Robotics Regional competitions took place at the Williams Arena and Mariucci Arena at the University of Minnesota this last weekend where two IRE students volunteered. FIRST Robotics is a high school competition where schools build robots and then compete to see which team can score the most points. Each school has six weeks to design and build a robot. For high school students, this is a crazy engineering challenge.

This year’s competition is called “Rebound Rumble” and is a modified version of basketball. The game is played on a 27 by 54 foot field, divided in two by a short barrier with three bridges crossing it. Two teams of three robots attempt to score baskets by acquiring foam basketballs and shooting them into one of four hoops placed at three different heights. At the beginning of the match, there is an autonomous period where the robots are programmed to act on their own. Baskets scored in this period are worth more points. Near the end of the match, robots can endeavor to balance on their team’s bridge for even more points. 

For volunteering, my friend and I were Scorekeepers at the Williams Arena. Scorekeepers make sure the basketball points are properly counted and that the points from the bridge balancing are counted as well. We also coordinated with the video and sound crew and the announcers. In addition, before the matches began, we assisted with connecting the robots and driver stations to the field software. The competition ran from Thursday morning to Saturday afternoon and included 65 teams from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Tennessee.