Chantilly Robotics Team Kicks Off 2019 FIRST Robotics Competition Season CHANTILLY, VA, January 14, 2019. FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an organization founded to inspire young people's interest and participation in science and technology, announced this year’s FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) challenge, “Destination: Deep Space”, presented by Boeing, on January 5. Every year our team participates in “Kickoff”, an event held across the world where thousands of FRC teams tune into a live stream announcing that season’s game. This 2018-19 season’s game consists of two parts: a fifteen second period where the drivers cannot see the field and robots, a two minute and fifteen second period in which the drivers can see the field and operate their robot normally. The objective of the game is to place “cargo”, kickballs, as well as panels in designated slots to score as many points as possible in two minutes and thirty seconds. After the live stream, we split our over 100 member team into 8 groups led by members with strong leadership and engineering skills to come up with game strategy and robot design concepts. This year’s entire experience was planned specifically to involve everyone on our large team to contribute as well as promote internal “competition” among the groups to collectively generate the best ideas. Each group analyzed a different part of the game and presented their findings to the rest of the team. This method proved to be very effective because all team members quickly learned the rules of the game, which helped accelerate our plan after kickoff, design and prototyping. Members were split into groups again, with each group designing their own prototype robot and presenting their ideas to the entire team. We will release weekly updates on our team’s progress on our robot during the build season until mid-February. Watch our new kickoff video and others at: https://www.youtube.com/user/ChantillyRobotics612/ Our Team 612 goal is to make it to the World Championships in April for the second year in a row. We are seeking sponsorships to reach our $20,000 fundraising goal. For more information and to contribute, please visit http://www.chantillyrobotics.org/ About Chantilly Robotics At Chantilly Robotics, we brighten the future for leaders and student technologists within our team, school and community through fun and engaging methods of learning and teaching while shining a light on the importance of STEM. Chantilly Robotics is part of Chantilly Academy, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Press Release January 2019