1996 Archive

NASA Press Release
March 22, 1996

NASA LEWIS RESEARCH CENTER AND EAST TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL TEAM UP IN FIFTH ANNUAL U.S. FIRST COMPETITION

    U.S. FIRST is a national, not-for-profit coalition developing a broad range of innovative new programs to create excitement about science and technology among high school students. The U.S. FIRST Competition is one of those programs.

    "This year's involvement has proven to be the best ever," said Gary Crawford, program manager in the Educational Programs Office at the Lewis Research Center. "The engineers and technicians have worked daily with the students to brainstorm on the design for their robot champion. The students have learned a lot of engineering and technical principles from this experience. Before this, most students were not sure what the work of engineers and technicians involved, but now they have a much better idea."

    The U.S. FIRST Competition is a national tournament which pits radio-controlled "robo-gladiators" against each other in elimination matches. Mechanical gladiators fight to collect as many soccer balls as possible and score points by placing them in a goal. At the same time, they try to fend off the opposing team's robo-gladiators which are trying to collect more balls -- or steal them from their opponent. The devices are built by teams of high school students and professional engineers from a standard kit of parts provided by U.S. FIRST. This year's kit challenged builders to produce robots with both horizontal and vertical motion.

    Ninety-six teams are expected to participate in the 1996 competition. This is the third time Lewis has sponsored a team to attend this competition. The Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority will co-sponsor this year's involvement. Some of the other team sponsors include Boeing, Chrysler Corporation, Motorola, Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute and Texas Instruments.

    Last year 64 teams competed. East Tech, the only school from an urban area in the Nation that was sponsored, came in thirty-first in their first year of competition. In 1994, East Tech participated on a team sponsored by the Lewis Research Center that was comprised of students from nine schools in Cuyahoga County.