This weekend in New York City, thousands of K-12 students from all five boroughs came together for three days of a student robotics competition. The 10th annual New York City FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC: high school) combines the regional FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC: high school), FIRST LEGO League (FLL: middle school) and Junior FIRST LEGO League (Jr. FLL: elementary school level) in one Mega event. This year marks the 10th Anniversary of the New York City FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). FIRST is a non-profit, volunteer-driven organization that inspires and rewards kids in science and technology. For a list of all 64 high school teams currently registered from all five boroughs and beyond click here.
This year’s FRC game was called “Breakaway” and it is essentially a robot soccer with six robotic players and two alliances made up of three student teams. We visited the Javitz Center on friday as the highschool teams were busy unpacking and setting up their FRC robots. The enthusiasm of the teens in all of these teams was almost catchy. But most of all, we were very proud of the high ratio of female team members, and there were even a few all girl teams like the team 3204 from Mary Louis Academy in Queens. It really is inspiring to see that more girls are getting involved in robotics and engineering. For a list of all the championship winners, click here.
[nggallery id=64]