The Boy Scouts of America will be in attendance along with U.S. Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX), chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology – which funds NASA and the National Science Foundation. Talent from The Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters series and host of The Science Channel’s hit show Head Rush, Kari Byron, will serve as master of ceremonies.
The VEX Robotics program is in support of The White House's STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) initiative to get kids engaged in higher learning, and recently received recognition from President Obama, who visited a Miami Central High School classroom where he interacted with students excelling in STEM education through VEX Robotics. More than 100,000 students worldwide currently use VEX Robotics.
As the fastest growing robotics program in the world, the VEX Robotics Competition is organized by the REC (Robotics Education and Competition) Foundation, and the 2011 VEX Robotics World Championship serves as the final event of the 2010-2011 competition season. This year, almost 600 out of the nearly 4,000 VEX Robotics Competition teams have earned the right to bring their robotic creations to the event, where they will form strategic alliances with other teams and challenge their toughest competitors playing the game Round Up. All attending teams qualified for the tournament after dedicating countless hours to honing their building, programming, and strategy skill sets.
In addition to the middle and high school VEX Robotics Competitions, the 2011 VEX Robotics World Championship will spotlight 35 university teams, as they strive for the VEX Robotics College Challenge World Champion title. The BEST Robotics Competition National Championship will take place in the Jostens Center, and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy AROW water robotics competition will be held at Champion Stadium.
The Boy Scouts of America will host a booth on Saturday, April 16, to showcase the new Robotics Merit Badge, and more than 20 scouts will be in attendance, aiming to be some of the first to complete the robotics merit badge requirements.
Partners and sponsors of the 2011 VEX Robotics Competition World Championship include Autodesk, NASA, EMC Corporation, Intelitek, Innovation First International, iD Tech Camps, the REC Foundation, Automation Direct, Northrop Grumman, Microchip, the United States Coast Guard Academy, and the Robotics Academy at Carnegie Mellon University.
Round Up, the 2010-2011 VEX Robotics Competition Game, is played on a 12’x12’ square field where two alliances composed of two teams each compete against one another. Each match consists of a 20- second autonomous period where robots are controlled by onboard software, followed by two minutes of human-operated play. Fans can follow the competition and sign up for real-time competition news and results via live streamcasts, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube updates. For more information visit RobotEvents.com/championship.