About 140 teams composed of about 2,000 students from Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. met up to compete in the FIRST Chesapeake Robotics Championship sponsored by Newport News Shipbuilding. The championship took place at the Hampton Coliseum over the course of two days. Competitors entered into the championship for a chance to go to the FIRST World Robotics Championship, which is being hosted in Houston, Texas this year.
FIRST Chesapeake aims to promote leadership and teamwork by working with students through the field of STEM including working with robots. The robotics competition helps students to learn the skills listed before and many more. During the competition students must work together in order to program robots to complete difficult games against the robots from other teams. In doing this, students are learning how to brand themselves or the company, how to work as a team, and what goes into programming a robot.
This robotics competition is more than just playing with robots. Regardless of the students’ career goal or interest, this competition teaches them important life lessons that they will need to know no matter their ultimate field of choice. In order to learn more about FIRST Chesapeake and what they have to offer you can go to www.firstchesapeake.org.