Boston FIRST Robotics 2012: Rebound Rumble in Pictures

March usually brings droves of cheering fans to big arenas for basketball games, so the scene at Boston University’s Agganis Arena last Saturday seems fitting for the season. Except it was squat robots, not tall athletes, that were shooting hoops.

The event was the Boston edition of FIRST Robotics, a worldwide robotics building competition for high school students. Each team gets a robot-building kit and a set span of time to construct its gadget, which later competes on teams. FIRST, the organization behind the event, was founded more than 20 years ago by Segway inventor Dean Kamen with the mission of getting young students excited about the science and technology fields and offering them a different extracurricular outlet. Take a look at the pictures below, and you’ll see some serious fervor, fandom, and team spirit behind these competitions.

This year’s challenge is dubbed Rebound Rumble, and is played by two competing teams of three robots each. The teams battle to shoot as many basketballs into their hoops as they can during a 2 minute and 15 second match, with more points allotted to baskets scored at higher heights. As if that’s not enough, robots conclude the match by balancing on a bridge that’s in the middle of the field. Three winning teams from this year’s Boston competition will head down to the championships in Missouri next month: Team 341 from Ambler, PA; Team 233 from Rockledge/Cocoa Beach, FL; and Team 246 from Boston University/Boston University Academy (also winner of the Regional Chairman’s Award). The full list of honorees from this past weekend is here.

Boston FIRST public relations coordinator Christina Rizer captured all the action expertly and was kind enough to share her photos. Take a look below at the selection that caught our eye.

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FIRST Robotics 2012 — Boston’s Rebound Rumble
Photo by Christina Rizer

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Author: Erin Kutz

Erin Kutz has a background in covering business, politics and general news. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. Erin previously worked in the Boston bureau of Reuters, where she wrote articles on the investment management and mutual fund industries. While in college, she researched for USA Today reporter Jayne O’Donnell’s book, Gen Buy: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail. She also spent a semester in Washington, DC, reporting Capitol Hill stories as a correspondent for two Connecticut newspapers and interning in the Money section of USA Today, where she assisted with coverage on the retail and small business beats. Erin got her first taste of reporting at Boston University’s independent student newspaper, as a city section reporter and fact checker and editor of the paper’s weekly business section.