The Antelope Valley will host its inaugural FIRST Robotics Competition April 6-7, in the gymnasium of Eastside High School in Lancaster.
The regional competition “Aerospace Valley Regional” serves as a championship-qualifying robotics competition and is sponsored by NASA, Lockheed Martin, Northrop, Boeing and several other local organizations.
Opening ceremonies begin at 8:30 a.m. and will include opening comments by David McBride, center director at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base.
Qualification matches will start at 9 a.m. on both April 6 and April 7. The Friday awards ceremony will begin at 5:45 p.m., while the Saturday awards ceremony will begin at 4:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
An estimated 500 to 700 high-school students on 36 teams from around the world, will compete in the 2018 season challenge, “FIRST POWER UP.”
The “FIRST POWER UP” game pairs two alliances of video game characters with their human operators as they work to defeat a “boss” to escape an arcade game where they are trapped inside. Each match begins with a 15-second autonomous period in which robots operate only on pre-programmed instructions. During this period, robots work to earn points according to the game’s rules. During the remaining two minutes and 15 seconds, student drivers’ control robots to earn points. For more details on the game’s rules, click here.
For FIRST Robotics information, visit https://www.firstinspires.org/. For Aerospace Valley Regional event information, visit https://www.avregional.org/. For more information about NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, visit http://www.nasa.gov/armstrong.