A three-team alliance of high school robotics teams won the FIRST Robotics Detroit Regional, a two-day competition held this weekend at Wayne State University. They are: Utica Schools, Detroit Cody High and Bloomfield Hills International Academy.

The nationwide FIRST Robotics (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) program provides students a unique preview into the professional world of engineering, science and math, as they work under the guidance of career professional adult mentors while competing with their peers in a high school varsity sport atmosphere.

All of the 32 teams competing last weekend were from Michigan, which has had more than its share of success in FIRST Robotics.  In five of the last six years, a national champion has come from the Great Lakes State.

Three schools are named winners of the Detroit Regional because FIRST Robotics is set up where teams compete as an alliance. This promotes teamwork, conquering challenges with others and most importantly, FIRST’s Motto: Gracious Professionalism.

The runners up taking second place were an alliance of three additional high schools: Pontiac Central, Clarkston and Clinton Twsp. L’Anse Creuse. 

The two alliances that reached the semifinals before being eliminated by the alliances above were comprised of a total of six teams from: Detroit Country Day, Allen Park & Cabrini High, Ferndale-Royal Oak, Monroe High, Saginaw Schools Career Complex and Oakland Schools Tech Campus Northeast.

This year's game, called FIRST Overdrive, is played on a 54-by-27-foot track divided into a red side and a blue side, with an overpass that marks the red and blue finish lines while also supporting four trackballs to start the game. Two three-team alliances race around the track in a counter clockwise direction manipulating trackballs that they must first try knocking off the overpass. Robots start in an autonomous mode, but for the majority of the game are radio controlled by team operators standing at either end of the field.

During the Teleoperated period, robots traveling in a counter clockwise direction score two points whenever their robot or trackball crosses their finish line, and eight points whenever their trackball passes over their overpass. Alliances score an additional 12 points for each of their Trackballs that are positioned anywhere on the overpass at the end of the match.

FIRST, founded by well-known inventor Dean Kamen, is entering its 20th year of operation. The games are designed by MIT professor Woody Flowers and NASA exploratory robotics director Dave Lavery.

At the Jan. 5 kickoff, teams learned about the new game contents and rules for 2008 for the first time and also picked up a set of starter parts supplied by FIRST from its New Hampshire headquarters.  While some robotic components and concepts are reused from previous years, FIRST always designs a new game with different tactics each year so challenges become fresh and innovative, while also not giving experienced teams too much of an advantage over rookie teams.

More at www.usfirst.org.