VCU’s Siegel Center to host 2,000 high school students at robotics competition March 1-3

Nearly 2,000 high school students on more than 60 teams from Virginia, the District of Columbia, five other states and Canada will gather at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Stuart C. Siegel Center this week for the annual FIRST Robotics Competition NASA/VCU Regional. 

The event represents the culmination of six weeks of intense design and construction activity by students and their professional mentors. Teams will compete head-to-head with robots testing their efforts in strategy, design and fabrication.

This year’s game is played by two, three-team alliances on a 54 x 26-foot field with robots than cannot exceed 6 feet in height or weigh more than 120 pounds. In this year’s game, “Rack ‘N’ Roll,” students’ robots will hang inflated, colored tubes on pegs configured in rows and columns on a 10-foot high center “rack” structure. The event is free and open to the public. The 2007 team list is available at the virginiafirst Web site.

In addition to the students, their teachers, mentors and numerous volunteers, representatives of FIRST, VCU, NASA Langley and key sponsors will be on hand for the three-day event.  Sponsors include Genworth Financial, Qimonda, Raytheon, Booz Allen Hamilton, DuPont Spruance, Lockheed Martin and Micron Technology.

The FIRST LEGO League will have exhibits in the upper lobby and the FIRST Vex Challenge will hold demo scrimmages on Friday. 

The event schedule is as follows:

Thursday, March 1 – 8:30 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. – Registration, robot inspection and practice rounds
Friday, March 2 – 9:00 a.m. – Opening Ceremonies. 10:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. – Competition Matches
Saturday, March 3 – 9:00 a.m. – Opening Ceremonies.  9:30 – 11:45 a.m. – Competition Matches.  1:00 – 3:45 p.m. – Final Rounds.  4:00 p.m. – Closing Ceremonies

For more information about the FIRST Robotics Competition NASA/VCU Regional, visit FIRST online at www.usfirst.org or the Virginia FIRST Web site at www.virginiafirst.org.