This weekend, Steve Storck and I took a drive to watch the underwater robot competition at George Mason University in Fairfax VA.

It was a high school competition that used the robots that the kids built as part of their Introduction to Engineering classes one semester.

It was a lot of fun, and I've put together a video from the event (thanks to Steve for remembering to bring his camera)

It's Here on YouTube

Cow Power paid off BIG-TIME for NeXTGEN at the 2008 World Festival in Atlanta Georgia.

Their energy audit of the Swan Meadows School, and proposal for using a Methane Digester to produce Electricity (Cow Power) got the judge's attention, and won them a first place (Best in the world) for research quality.

NeXTGEN also got a table score of 399 out of 400 on practice-day, and an "official" score of 392 out of 400 on game day. Unfortunately, many teams scored a perfect 400, which took NeXTGEN out of the running for a trophy.

Even if you can't travel with the teams to Atlanta, you can join the fun via the magic of Video Streaming. Click on this NASA LINK to jump to a page that has links to all the available video streams.

Choose the video stream to watch based on the field we'll be playing on...

Team 2765 "NeXT GEN" will be playing on the EINSTEIN FIELD on Thursday and Friday. The kids will be wearing their black team-shirts with the white Cow-Power logo.

Two FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics teams from Garrett County will be traveling to Atlanta in April to compete in an international robotics competition.

Both teams are seeking community donations to help pay for travel and accomodations.
Donations can be sent to: GEARS, Box 277, Mc Henry MD, 21541
Add a memo for either Team 2764 or Team 1629

The robot performed really well at Annapolis, and we ended up in the 11th seed position out of 60 robots, with a 6:2 record.

This got us picked for the elimination matches, but we didn't get past the Quarter finals. D'oh.

The drive system performed fantastically and we're still on our first set of wheels with no sign of excessive wear on any threads.

We had a few technical problems (as expected in our first competition) but now we feel prepared for Cleveland :)

The Southern Middle School FLL team is heading to Atlanta to represent Maryland at the FIRST World Festival.

Unfortunately it's an expensive trip and so the team is looking for sponsors. If you'd like to support the team and help offset their trip costs, you can send a tax deductible donation to GEARS and just write Team 2765 in the memo field.

The team will glady accept donations of any amount, but sponsors who donate $500 or more by March 15th will get their name or logo on our team shirts.

Well, it's "official" Garrett Southern Middle School's NeXTGen team (2765) is going to Atlanta again !!! Woo Hoo

The FIRST LEGO League Championship tournament at UMBC Baltimore campus was a BLAST again this year. BOTH Garrett County teams came away with top 1st place trophies.

After a series of tough robot table competitions (which ended with two playoffs between Bloomington's "Radioactive Tater Tots" and Southern Middle's "NeXTGEN" teams) Bloomington was victorious, and took the 1st place robot performance trophy, beating out 71 other teams. CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

The three Garrett County FIRST LEGO teams all brought home trophies from the Pittsburgh Regional competition this weekend.

The Northern Middle School team won First Place in Robot Performance with a top score of 386 out of 400.

The Southern Middle School team won Third Place in Robot performance with a top score of 340 out of 400.
The team also won Fourth place in the Research Project.

The Accident Elementary School Team Won Third Place in Teamwork.

Sure do.

As an experiment, I got together with Sam (one of the Southern Middle School FLL kids), and Ian (one of his buddies) and we tried putting together a small underwater ROV (remotely operated vehicle).

Check out the Photo gallery to see what we made.

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