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03-013
For Release: March 5, 2003

Sally V. Harrington
Media Relations Office
216/433-2037
Sally.V.Harrington{at}nasa.gov

Students and Robots Converge on Cleveland to Compete
====================================================

It started in January. The game and rules were revealed. Then the kit 
of parts arrived. Now the students are done designing, building and 
testing, and the robots are ready to roll.

The Buckeye Regional FIRST Robotics Competition will rock the 
Cleveland State University Convocation Center March 6-8. This event is 
sponsored by NASA's Glenn Research Center in cooperation with 
corporations, educational institutions and organizations throughout 
the Greater Cleveland area and by NASA's Robotics Education Project.

"Interesting students in science, technology and engineering through 
this competition is one of the many ways NASA is seeking to inspire 
the next generation of explorers," said Glenn Director of External 
Programs John Hairston.

Hundreds of students, who make up the 64 teams from high schools in 
Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, West 
Virginia and Canada, will compete in a game called Stack Attack. 
Although every team started out with the same kit of parts provided by 
FIRST, there will be 64 unique robots at the Buckeye Regional.

The teams will be uncrating their robots on Thursday morning at 8 a.m. 
and will start getting them ready for competition and participating in 
practice rounds. On Friday the opening ceremony is at 9 a.m. and the 
seeding matches begin at 9:30 a.m. and awards are presented at 4:30 
p.m. On Saturday the opening ceremony is at 9 a.m., the seeding 
matches continue until noon and at 1 p.m. the final rounds begin. 
Awards are presented at 3 p.m. on Saturday.

The winners of this regional competition, and the 22 other regionals 
being held across the country over the next five weeks, will compete 
in the FIRST Robotics Championship Competition in Houston in April. 
Regional and national awards are also presented for excellence in 
design, engineering innovation, control systems, demonstrated team 
spirit, sportsmanship, creativity and many other categories.

Through NASA's Robotics Education Project, 20 of the teams in the 
Buckeye Regional were awarded sponsorships to enable them to 
participate in this year's competition. Three teams were awarded 
grants from Glenn's Office of Educational Programs. Ten Ohio teams 
benefited from a donation made by the Jennings Foundation. Each team 
also receives monetary support from corporate sponsors in their local 
areas.

This regional competition is part of the FIRST (For Inspiration and
Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition, an
international program dedicated to increasing interest in science and
engineering and inspiring in young people, their schools, and 
communities an appreciation of science and technology.

Working side-by-side with professional engineers and technicians from 
their sponsoring corporations, colleges, and government agencies, the 
students have a chance to see what real-world engineering is all 
about. There are no losers in the FIRST robotics competition. Through 
this unique hands-on experience the students gain valuable knowledge 
of engineering, mechanics, project leadership, time management, task 
sequencing, physics, computers and teamwork.

As a result of the relationships formed between the students and 
mentors, the students who participate in this competition are creating 
their futures.  Dean Kamen, the founder of FIRST, predicted at the 
kick-off event for this year's competition, "The number of points 
won't be remembered, but in 10-20 years, participants will do 
something to make the world a better place."

NASA Television will broadcast the 2003 Buckeye Regional FIRST 
Robotics Competition from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. EST on Saturday, March 
8. To access NASA TV via satellite, the coordinates are GE-2, 
transponder 9C, C-band, located at 85 degrees West longitude. The 
frequency is 38880.0 MHz.  Polarization is vertical and audio is 
monaural at 6.8 MHz.

NASA sponsors seven of the 23 regional competitions and 200 of the 
nearly 800 teams participating in the 2003 FIRST competition. 
Information about the NASA Robotics Education Project can be found at 
http://robots.nasa.gov.  Coverage of additional regional events, and 
the Championship competition, will be carried during subsequent weeks. 
A schedule of the covered events can be found at 
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Breaking.html.

Further information including a list of the teams competing in the 
Buckeye Regional, a list of the sponsors of the event and a gallery of 
photographs from the 2002 Buckeye Regional can be found at 
http://www.firstbuckeye.org

For additional information about FIRST, based in Manchester, N.H., go 
to http://www.usfirst.org

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