Northern California middle and high school robotics teams will demonstrate their robotics skills at the eighth annual northern California Botball Robotics Tournament at the Leavey Center on the Santa Clara University campus on Saturday, April 23, 2005. Head-to-head double elimination rounds start at approximately 2:00 p.m. PDT.

News media are invited to attend the tournament.

Date: Saturday, April 23, 2005

Schedule:

  • Seeding rounds: 10:00 a.m. PDT
  • Double elimination rounds: 2:00 p.m. PDT (approximate)
  • Awards ceremony: 5:30 p.m. PDT (approximate)

Who: 33 middle and high school robotics teams from 24 Bay Area and northern California schools.

Where: The Leavey Center at Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, Calif. Admission: Free and open to the public

Botball is the robotics program designed to engage students in learning science, technology, engineering and math. Students are given seven weeks to design, build and program two microcontrolled robots with LEGO structures to compete in a fast-paced regional tournament. This season, one microcontroller includes high-performance vision processing.

By building robots, students are exposed to high-tech equipment, gain knowledge of project design and computer programming, and develop team problem-solving skills. Unlike many robotics competitions, robots are programmed in the ‘C’ programming language and use no remote controls. Game play is based solely on the skill of the team programmers. Students also can compete in the creation of Web sites to document their team progress.

The tournament is presented by the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics, Norman, Okla., in conjunction with Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, Calif., and NASA’s Robotics Education Project at NASA Ames Research Center, located in California’s Silicon Valley. The NASA Robotics Education Project is supported through NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. and is directed by David Lavery, program executive for Solar System Exploration.

For information about the middle and high school teams participating in the eighth annual northern California tournament, visit:

http://www.botball.org/php/standard/registered.html?RegionIdx=109

For more information about the NASA Robotics Education Project and Botball, visit:

http://robotics.nasa.gov

http://www.botball.org

For more information about the KISS Institute, visit:

http://www.kpir.org