New York City FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), along with School-Business Partnerships of Long Island, presented the FIRST Tech Challenge Qualifying Tournament at Hewlett High School in Hewlett. Twenty teams from Long
Island, including Droid Bots from New Hyde Park, took part in the day-long competition. Droid Bots won the Motivate Award and took second place with the Inspire Award.
The tournament requires students in grades seven through twelve to design, build and program a robot to compete within an alliance format against other teams. Each year, a different themed challenge is presented to those who participate in the tournament.
Alliances of two teams programmed their robots to place plastic blocks onto pendulum goals. During each two-and-a-half minute match, teams also had to raise their team flag up a flagpole, elevate their robots off the ground using a platform pull-up bar and finish the match with a balanced pendulum to earn extra points.
