UW News

February 15, 2002

Rival robots go head-to-head in practice meet for UW regional robotics smackdown

WHO:
University of Washington engineering students and students from Roosevelt High School, and other area high school teams who have built robots for regional and national contests.

WHAT:
A pre-competition tournament to fine-tune the robotic competitors.

WHEN:
Saturday, Feb. 16, from noon to 4 p.m.

WHERE:
Roosevelt High School gymnasium, located at 1410 N.E. 66th St. in Seattle.

DETAILS:
SWAT Robotics, a team that combines students from the UW’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Roosevelt High School, will host a robotics competition to test their latest creation against the handiwork of other area teams in preparation for a regional competition, set for March 28-30 at the UW. Teams from Redmond, Bellevue, Tacoma and several other Western Washington high schools have been invited to compete. The robots, weighing in at about 130 pounds, will compete in a variety of tasks, including maneuvering around obstacles, capturing balls and dunking them into goals. Three days after the festival, teams will ship their robots to a holding area, where they will remain until regionals start next month. The regional meet will include 34 teams from as far away as Brazil. A national contest is scheduled for April in Florida.

The regional and national competitions, sponsored by For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, or FIRST, are intended to introduce students to engineering in a realistic, hands-on format. Teams are given a basic parts list and six weeks to design, build and test their robots for competitive games, which change each year. That accounts for the UW-Roosevelt team’s moniker, SWAT, or Students Working Against Time.


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For more information, contact Alex Mamishev, UW assistant professor of electrical engineering, at (206) 221-5729 or mamishev@ee.washington.edu. The SWAT site is at http://swat.ee.washington.edu. For details about the FIRST competition see www.usfirst.org.