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" Last weekend, 66 high school robotics teams from across the tri-state area gathered at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan to compete in the New York City FIRST Robotics regional competition.  FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology) is a high school robotics competition created by Dean Kamen that combines DIY skills, science, technology and sports into a rough-and-tumble competition. It begins in January each year, when teams from all over the United States  receive standardized parts kits and a set of rules for the game. Regional competitions are held throughout February, March and April, leading to the FIRST Championships, which will take place this year April 16 to April18 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.  This year, the FIRST Robotics Competition game is called Lunacy. Robots score points by launching game balls\u2014&amp;quot;moon rocks&amp;quot;\u2014into trailers pulled behind opposing robots. Complicating matters is the low-friction polymer playing surface, which causes the robots to slip and skid at nearly every attempted change of direction. Each match pits two alliances, each composed of three robotics teams, against one another, and lasts 2 minutes 15 seconds.  Throughout Saturday and early Sunday at the Javits Center, teams competed in a series of preliminary matches, each in different, random alliances, competing for one of 24 spots in the elimination round. At the end of the preliminary round, the 66 teams were ranked based on the number of matches they won, as well as on points scored during those matches. The top eight teams automatically earned places in the next phase of the competition, and each select two teams to join their alliance for the elimination round.  The Robotic Plague, from the Staten Island Technical High School, and the top qualifying team, marshaled Red Alliance 1. As alliance mates, the Plague picked Team Overdrive, a group of home-schooled New Jersey teens with a high-scoring robot, and the Montclair, N.J., Bulldogs Robotics team and its agile bot, Ampersand. The alliance breezed through its best-of-three quarterfinal encounter, taking the first match 94\u201356 and the second 54\u201346.  Red Alliance 1&amp;#039;s strategy was to single out weak or high-scoring robots, Montclair driver Jen Filatava said before her semifinal. &amp;quot;We assess their speed and capacity. Sometimes you try to score on them, other times you try to pin weaker bots.&amp;quot;  Before the first match, fellow driver Ben Hadley said the Red Alliance planned to have Team Overdrive and the Robotic Plague go on the offensive\u2014by collecting moon rocks and attempting to dump them in opposing trailers\u2014while Montclair would focus on pinning its opponents&amp;#039; top-scoring robot against the wall, rendering it impotent.  Unfortunately for Red Alliance 1, things went haywire immediately. A wheel on the Robotic Plague&amp;#039;s bot jammed, stalling it against the wall in its starting corner and leaving it completely exposed to opposition attacks. Just 20 seconds into the match, Red Alliance 1 trailed by 22 points. Twenty seconds later, that margin increased to 32, as the opposing Blue Alliance dumped moon rock after moon rock in the crippled robot. When the final buzzer rang, the score read 102\u201362, against Red Alliance.  &amp;quot;The right side was not running,&amp;quot; Graham Freedland, a driver for the Robotic Plague, said. &amp;quot;We couldn&amp;#039;t do anything out there.&amp;quot;  After quickly repairing the damaged bot, Red Alliance 1 returned to the playing field for its second semifinal match. One loss from elimination, the alliance decided against altering its strategy from the match before. This time around, the robots sprang from their starting corners; Team Overdrive and the Robotic Plague chased moon rocks and dumped them with deadly efficiency. Meanwhile, Montclair trapped the opposition&amp;#039;s most effective robot against a wall, where it remained for most of the match. Still, the perfectly executed strategy failed to achieve victory, and Red Alliance 1 lost, 68\u201364. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a4184/4308384/>