Last September marked the beginning of our FIRST Robotics Team, 2130 Alpha+'s, fourteenth season and January 4 marked the beginning of what is going to be a crazy few months as we try to build a robot to successfully complete the challenge we were given that morning.
On January 4, students, mentors, parents, teachers, alumni, and community members all gathered early in the morning, eager for the 2020 FIRST Robotics Competition Kickoff and even more so for the game to be revealed with the game animation.
This year's game is under a 2 minute and 30 second time limit, in which two competing alliances of three teams work to protect FIRSTCity from approaching asteroids. Each alliance is tasked with racing to collect and store Power Cells to energize each alliance's Shield Generators. To activate each stage of the Shield Generator, teams manipulate their Control Panels after scoring a specific number of Power Cells. Before the match ends, droids must race to their Rendezvous Point to get their Shield Generator operational for the city's protection. The game animation showing a video walk through of the game is shown above.
March 25-28 we will be attending the Idaho Regional in Nampa. This regional currently has 42 teams registered to attend. These teams attending are from far and wide. There will be teams from California, Idaho, Arizona, Washington, Minnesota, Utah, Colorado, and even a team from Durango, Mexico. During these three days of competition, teams will compete in alliances of three. The teams will compete in several different matches, with a different alliance each time, and they will attempt to score as many points as possible. On the third day, the top eight ranking teams will get to pick their alliance of four, to compete in the finals. The winning alliance will have the opportunity to compete at the worlds competition in Houston, Texas.

Go Alpha+!