I am volunteering as a design and Autodesk Inventor  mentor with local Portland Oregon high school FIRST Robotics (FRC) Team 1540 of Catlin Gabel. This weekend Our team hosted the 8th annual BunnyBot event where local teams are invited to compete with robots while preparing for the big FIRST Robotics competition seasons which starts January 9th, 2016. The Team 1540 Flaming Chickens are lead by Dale Yocum.

The competition goal was pretty simple and very fun. Teams were organized into three robots each side the Blue Alliance and Red Alliance and then worked to score points by the robots getting footballs from their end to the opposing alliances end. To make it more fun with team cooperation you got more points for passing the ball between robots. Also there are 3 stuffed bunnies in each alliance end zone and you get deducted points by having them in your zone so you needed to get them out and into the other alliances end zone. Team robots were scored by a high tech point system written by students and at the end of the day some robots had tapped out due to collisions or technical issues.

One of my team’s robots placed first lead by Anna Dodson.

What an amazing event for young high school students to learn about design, programming, teamwork, and so many more things. It is also a great opportunity for the adult mentors to pass on knowledge and skills that will last a lifetime with the students. There are also leagues for younger students in the FIRST Lego Leagues.
What’s the worst that could happen? More men and women engineers, roboticist, scientists, programmers, and makers in this world imagining, designing and creating a better world would be a good thing.

Congratulations to everyone that participated in this event and everyone involved in FIRST Robotics Competitions!

Here are some photos from this BunnyBot 2015 event.