Well, a little background doesn't hurt before I dive into my last weekend activity.
FIRST stands for 'For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology', an organization founded by Dean Kamen (more popularly known as the inventor of Segway, although he has got tons of other far more accomplished inventions/patents. But I wont go there..go figure on Google!). And the name says it all abt their mission.
Anyway, so FIRST conducts a robotics competition called FRC held annually that is designed to inspire high school students to pursue engineering in the future. So what more exciting than getting a bunch of kids to put together a robot as a team and then have a robo competition! So I recently volunteered to mentor one of the teams that will participate in FRC in Jan 2011. And if I got to mentor I got to put it together myself before bossing them around right? LOL. Just kidding, its a collaborative effort of course and I will hardly be required until the robots start spinning around themselves instead of getting out of a maze. Haha. But the sheer energy in these kids puts me to shame! I sometimes wonder where all that passion vaporizes once we become adults. The raw passion and excitement to learn stuff and do stuff. I miss that! (I wont digress here, don't worry:))
So I had to attend a mandatory bootcamp for mentors as a prerequisite. Although I will admit it was mostly a dull day (also too far away in Brooklyn and too early for a Saturday - gosh I cant stop whining, can I?). As I said, adults are boring, kids are fun!:) All of us poured through the manuals and tried to figure out wiring of the control system (mostly a National Instruments compact RIO controller) and doing a smoke test before the robots hit the road. You know, adults are just so STUCK UP! (incl. me) LOL. I am more excited abt the team training camps where I will be assigned and dedicated to one single team of kids. So let's see.
Btw, checkout the awesome material on programming robots by the lead mentor at NYC FIRST.
PS: I happened to attend in person, Dean Kamen's speech on his next invention/mission (and that is to make clean drinking water accessible to everyone in the world). I was so blown away. There was a ~15sec applause from a spellbound audience after he finished speaking. Among other things, he spoke abt a black box he built (that works on bio fuel) that takes dirty water and purifies it. No electricity, no batteries required. What a genius!
FIRST stands for 'For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology', an organization founded by Dean Kamen (more popularly known as the inventor of Segway, although he has got tons of other far more accomplished inventions/patents. But I wont go there..go figure on Google!). And the name says it all abt their mission.
Anyway, so FIRST conducts a robotics competition called FRC held annually that is designed to inspire high school students to pursue engineering in the future. So what more exciting than getting a bunch of kids to put together a robot as a team and then have a robo competition! So I recently volunteered to mentor one of the teams that will participate in FRC in Jan 2011. And if I got to mentor I got to put it together myself before bossing them around right? LOL. Just kidding, its a collaborative effort of course and I will hardly be required until the robots start spinning around themselves instead of getting out of a maze. Haha. But the sheer energy in these kids puts me to shame! I sometimes wonder where all that passion vaporizes once we become adults. The raw passion and excitement to learn stuff and do stuff. I miss that! (I wont digress here, don't worry:))
So I had to attend a mandatory bootcamp for mentors as a prerequisite. Although I will admit it was mostly a dull day (also too far away in Brooklyn and too early for a Saturday - gosh I cant stop whining, can I?). As I said, adults are boring, kids are fun!:) All of us poured through the manuals and tried to figure out wiring of the control system (mostly a National Instruments compact RIO controller) and doing a smoke test before the robots hit the road. You know, adults are just so STUCK UP! (incl. me) LOL. I am more excited abt the team training camps where I will be assigned and dedicated to one single team of kids. So let's see.
Btw, checkout the awesome material on programming robots by the lead mentor at NYC FIRST.
PS: I happened to attend in person, Dean Kamen's speech on his next invention/mission (and that is to make clean drinking water accessible to everyone in the world). I was so blown away. There was a ~15sec applause from a spellbound audience after he finished speaking. Among other things, he spoke abt a black box he built (that works on bio fuel) that takes dirty water and purifies it. No electricity, no batteries required. What a genius!
1 comment:
FIRST is just awesome, glad you are mentoring a new team.
Thanks for posting the link of programming info; looks very interesting.
I'm a mentor for a 2010 rookie team from Michigan.
I also have a blog that I update just about daily. Roger on FIRST
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