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BEST, Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology, is a national 6-week robotics competition in the United States held each fall, designed to help interest middle school and high school students in possible engineering careers. See also Robot Robotics is the science and technology of Robots and their design manufacture and application The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Engineering is the Discipline and Profession of applying technical and scientific Knowledge and

Contents

History

While preparing for Engineering Day at the Texas Instruments facility in Sherman, Texas, engineers Ted Mahler and Steve Marum along with several students watched a video featuring the work Woodie Flowers was doing with his students at MIT, and wondered why they could not extend this idea to high school students. Texas Instruments ( better known in the electronics industry (and popularly as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, USA Sherman is a city in Grayson County, Texas, United States. The population was 35082 at the 2000 census Woodie C Flowers is a professor of Mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The BEST competition began in 1993 in Sherman, Texas with one small hub featuring 14 schools (one from San Antonio) and 221 students. Year 1993 ( MCMXCIII) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1993 Gregorian calendar)

Structure

Currently, BEST has hubs across the country. There are approximately 10,000 students, 800+ teams, with 35 hubs in 15 states, and 3 regionals. Any school may start a team, and there is no cost to participate. The hubs rely on local financial support from businesses and universities. A business (also called firm or an enterprise) is a legally recognized organizational entity designed to provide goods and/or services to A university is an institution of Higher education and Research, which grants Academic degrees in a variety of subjects Anyone can start a new hub serving a minimum of eight teams. On average, the cost for the first year of running a hub with 24 teams is $28,000.

Based on the task for the year, each team is given a parts list and kit of parts which they use to construct a robot. A robot is a mechanical or Virtual Artificial agent In practice it is usually an electro-mechanical system which by its appearance or movements This kit includes parts such as wood and PVC, along with the RC components necessary to control the robot. However, not every item on the parts list is supplied by BEST and must be obtained by the team. Items not on the list are not allowed, and the robot will be checked prior to competition for illegal items. Teams are given six weeks from kickoff to design and build the robot and all other facets of the competition.

The final robot must fit in a 2 foot cube at the beginning of each round of competition. The robot must also weigh under 24 pounds. Once a round has started, the robot can expand beyond the 2 foot cube via retractable arms, etc.

The game task is different each year, but historically the robot has often needed an arm with different grabbing abilities. One year the game centered on team work to try and get students to work together. The winning teams from local competition sites, or hubs, advance to regional championship sites after the local competition has ended.

Competition

BEST Robotics includes two elements: a robot competition, in which teams attempt to score as many points as possible in head-to-head competition, and the BEST award. The BEST award is more complex, encompassing such tasks as writing a high-quality technical notebook or engineering journal (which will be used to judge who will be a "wild card" in the semi-finals. That is, if their robot doesn't do well, they will still make it to the semi-finals, and have a chance to win), designing a website, an interview, delivering an oral presentation to a panel of judges, and creating a table display booth. A website (alternatively web site or Web site, a back-construction from the Proper noun World Wide Web) is a collection of Web pages

BEST encourages its teams to follow an engineering process, similar to the engineering process used in many engineering jobs. This gives students a taste of what they may have to do in future engineering jobs. It also hopes to get students excited about the field of engineering and more likely to go into it. Although BEST has not been able to keep up with alumni to see if BEST has had an effect on their career path, similar robotics competitions, like FIRST, show that activities like BEST do have a higher rate of students going into science and engineering related fields. FIRST, or F or I nspiration and R ecognition of S cience and T echnology is an organization founded by inventor Dean Kamen

Another challenge teams involved in BEST face is limited materials--the primary construction materials used in BEST are simple and easily formed. These materials include PVC pipe, string, plywood, a limited quantity of sheet metal, and a bit of aluminum, as well as miscellaneous hardware, 2 large motors and 2 small motors, and the electronics necessary to run these motors and the 3 provided servos. At the beginning of competition, the robot is checked over to make sure that no illegal parts are used. Originally, old printers were also part of the BEST kit and printer parts could be used on the machine. The limited materials make students think much more creatively with what they are given.

Past Year's Challenges

External links

Regional Competitions

Hub websites

Not a complete list of hubs, as not all hubs have websites. Also note that the cities given as hub locations only denote the location of the actual competition. Each hub draws schools from a specific geographic region (e. g. specific counties) -- any school in that region is eligible to compete in the said hubs.

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