I wasn’t on the math team in high school. My gray matter stalled out after entering the shadowy territory of trig and calculus. I certainly wasn’t a member of the robotics team — largely because we didn’t have one. And let’s be honest, I’m not sure I would have made a valuable addition. But in 2002, the UberBots were born, and according to the team motto, they “eat kryptonite for breakfast!” Even better, the UberBots, along with many other U.S. and international robotics teams are headed to Atlanta to duke it out at the 2009 FIRST Championship. And we’re going to check it out.

Here’s the scoop, according to the FIRST Web site: Eligible teams compete in short games played by remote-controlled robots. A team of 10 to 20 high-school students and a handful of mentors design and build the bots in six weeks out of a set of common parts, with the students guiding the robots on the field. The really good teams wind up in Atlanta battling for the yearly championship. The winner receives the Chairman’s Award. How sweet would that look on your MIT application?

Plus, it looks like a ton of fun. This year’s competition is called Lunacy. It involves building robots that can pick up balls and dump them in the baskets attached to your opponents’ robots. Just think of it as an extension of March Madness, except in April and with robots. If you’re not really getting the idea, here’s a video from a regional 2009 competition:

Anyone else headed down there?

More robotics reading at HowStuffWorks.com:
How FIRST Works
How Robots Work
How Nanorobots Will Work