I believe I will stay inside and watch the Robots

There was a time when I would have laughed if you had told me that I would stay inside on a beautiful spring day to watch a robotics competition.  Then I had kids, one of which is a self-proclaimed robot nerd, so there I was this weekend, watching the action from the sidelines.  My robot child is involved with FIRST Robotics FRC which is high school aged teams.  It’s my job to 1. Take pictures.  2. Sometimes provides snacks.  3. Nod like I know what my robot child is talking about when she is explaining stuff to me. So this weekend I took pictures, here is a look inside a competition; first a bird’s eye view from the stands:

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Second, some of the bots on the field:

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Third, one bot ready to launch a ball:

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Lastly, a partial view of the pits where the robots are worked on in between matches:

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Three things that going to a FIRST Robotics competition will teach you are false: 1. Kids these days are slackers. Wrong, I’m sure some are but then so are some adults. 2. If your robots is broken, too bad so sad.  Wrong, request a part and another team will help you out, even if they are competing against you. 3. Robot children can’t dance. Wrong, they can just as well or badly as the general population.

So, need an indoor activity in April and happen to be in St. Louis?  Stop by the Championship and check out all the fun and be amazed by the brain power kids today have to offer.

This post was written in response to the Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside and the Daily Post: I Believe.

Cheers!

 

 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Beginning

Are you a robot nerd? I’m not, but I do have one living in my house so I am by extension.  If you read this blog regularly you have probably noticed that I have children.  One of them is on a FIRST Robotics team at the local high school.  Yesterday was kick-off for the build season.  Build Season is the six weeks that the teams have to build their robots to compete in this year’s competition.  This year’s game is called Aerial Assist.

Last semester my robot child took a vinyl cutting machine that the school had but was broken, fixed it, and then used it to cut out her robotics team logo and put it on the exterior door of the robotics classroom.  The logo is a variation on the school’s mascot, which is a ram. Because I am a proud mom, I took a bunch of pictures:

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In this case I have a fast shutter speed because I knew I was going to bracket these photos and process them into HDR images using Photomatix.  I also created a black and white version:

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In both versions I decided to stick with trying to create photos that kept all the detail and stayed true to what you would see if you were up at the high school taking a look for yourself.

So, yesterday was the beginning of a very busy time in this household.  I’m excited for my robot child, because she is excited about the start of the season.  It’s a bit sad though, because a lot of my communication with her over the next six weeks will be via text.

If you’ve never heard of FIRST Robotics, maybe check out my links above, it is a really great program and they have all different age levels as well.

What do you think of the Ram logo that my robot child created? I think it is pretty cool.  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!