Masters to Host First Robotics Event

10/9/2018

Masters will host its first-ever robotics event on Saturday, October 27. The FIRST Tech Challenge workshop and scrimmage event will take place in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (IEC).

“We are expecting 10 teams from the Lower Hudson Valley, their coaches and FIRST officials – approximately 100 people,” says John Chiodo, Director of Innovation, Engineering and Computer Science. “This is an unprecedented honor for a first-year team, and is a precursor to our holding a FIRST Tech Challenge Tournament here next year,” he adds.

Masters received approval to host the event after Dr. Richard Kline, the FIRST regional coordinator, visited the School recently. “He was very impressed by our campus, the facility where we will hold the event, and most of all, our students and their hospitality,” says Mr. Chiodo. Dr. Kline is a computer science professor at Pace University Seidenberg School of CSIS.

The daylong event will include several workshops, its main focus. The IEC will also make its technology resources and shop tools available to visiting teams that wish to use them. Teams will have tables set up in the lower level hallway, and the Robotics Testing Facility will be open for testing and informal scrimmages.

“This is a much different program than the one that we have been involved with over the last five years,” Mr. Chiodo says. “The focus is on the education and less on the competition. We compete with robots so that we may learn from each other. We freely share design ideas, strategies, testing data, plans for fabricated parts, methods, test data, etc. We all become better roboticists through collaboration.”

FIRST Tech Challenge teams, which consist of 10 or more students in grades 7-12, design, build, program and operate robots to compete in a head-to-head challenge in an alliance format, according to the FIRST nonprofit organization.