By Jenn McDowell

WEARE – The FIRST robotics season kicked off for teams around the world with the announcement of this year’s challenge: FIRST Overdrive.

Through a Web simulcast from Southern New Hampshire University on Saturday, Jan. 5, 3, 500 high school teams from the all over the world, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the U.K., Brazil, Chile, Israel and the Netherlands viewed the national FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Board of Directors’ presentation of this year’s challenge – to construct a robot that operates under “supervisory control” incorporating both autonomous and manual power.

Dean Kamen, president of DEKA Research and Development Corporation in Manchester, founded the FIRST program in 1991. Today, New Hampshire alone has 28 FIRST Robotics teams as well as many FIRST

Lego League teams supported through schools, community volunteers and corporate sponsorship.

This year’s challenge game field was a 27- by 54-foot race track with red and blue lanes and had a 6-foot-6-inch high metal frame that went over it, similar to monkey bars. Red and blue “track balls,” two for each robot, sat on the frame.

Teams could score points by making laps around the track or by carrying or pushing the track balls.

Teams have six weeks to design and build a robot for competition using a kit provided by FIRST, including batteries, a controller, motors and other parts.

Jeff Beltramo, the FIRST mentor at John Stark Regional High School, which has about 12 students participating in the Oz-Ram team with Hopkinton and Derryfield High schools, said they were very excited about the challenge.

“When I first saw it, I thought it was kind of easy,” he said. After the team brainstormed ideas over the weekend, he realized it was a bit harder than he originally thought because of the difficulty in maneuvering the track balls, which are 40 inches in diameter.

“It’s a classic FIRST competition. They try to put a little bit in for the basic teams that don’t have that much experience, but they also throw in very challenging things,” he said.