On Saturday, January 16 the Science Academy of Chicago hosted the very first FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics competition. FTC is a robotics community that hosts competitions for schools to attend and display their creations. FTC creates challenges and schools have to create a robot that fulfills each part of the challenge. At the competitions, teams compete against each other to get the most points by doing. Each year a new challenge is picked for the competition. This year’s challenge is First Res-Q. First Res-Q is modeled after rescue situations faced by mountain explorers all over the globe. Played by two Alliances of two and teams robots each.
There are 139 FTC teams in Illinois, and around 10,000 teams all over the world. On Saturday, 14 of the 139 teams came from north Illinois. We worked very hard on organizing the competition for 2 weeks with the help of many staff members. The team devoted all their free time to helping with the set-up and documents for the competition.
Overall, It was an awesome event. All the teams were helpful and nice because FTC really pushes the phrase “Gracious Professionalism.” This phrase means that you should always be a good sport, a helping hand, and respectful at robotics related events. In all, everyone had a fantastic time because they got to learn so many new things about robotics. For the first time, we, SAOC, had the experience of hosting an immense event, which makes it extra special.