Robot wars rock convention center

Hartford (WTNH) - 60 teams, 1,500 high schoolers from as far away as Florida and Ohio rocked Hartford's Convention Center for the Connecticut Regional FIRST Robotics competition Saturday.

The challenge for these kids is to build a robot that'll get the most objects in the competition's trailer. They had to do it in six weeks with limited materials.

Oh, and win, like New Haven's own Hill Regional High.

"That felt really good," said Russell Rivera, a member of Team 558. "Yesterday we had our first win at the end of the match. So we're starting off on a good note today."

"FIRST is all about inspiring kids to get excited about science and engineering," event chairman Mike Sperber said. "The way that we do that is take high schools, partner them with engineers from industry, and they compete in this competition."

The kids, heck everyone's excited. This is a true spectator event complete with mascots and rowdy fans in the bleachers and on the world wide web.

A lot of people think robotics competitions are just for the engineering geeks, but they tell me it takes all kinds of people to make up a winning team.

"These teams are small businesses," Sperber said. "There's the technical aspect of building the robot, but teams have web sites, they have web site designers, theres an animation component to the competition so they have graphic designers."

Teams even recruit their schools' starring point guards to help score from the sidelines, which is totally legal by the way.

"Not just the designers and the builders but people really get together and as a team we succeed," Lindsay Carboneau from ACES High said.

"A whole bunch of different people joining," Rivera said. "Everybody's diverse. It's not only the computer nerds, that they used to refer. Everyone's now. You got popular kids coming in just because it's fun now. It's the only time we can play and have fun and not worry about stat sheets or worry about a coach yelling at us for losing."

The winners will advance to the championship at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta next month.