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FIRST Launches 2020 Season Powered by Star Wars

Published Wednesday Jan 8, 2020

FIRST Launches 2020 Season Powered by Star Wars

FIRST in Manchester launched the 2020 FIRST Robotics Competition with a new robotics game called INFINITE RECHARGE. Nearly 100,000 high-school students on 3,898 teams at 160 venues around the world joined the 2020 Kickoff via live broadcast.

Larry Cohen, president of FIRST, encouraged students to innovate and have fun: “I hope you tackle this season by working together to explore new ideas, to be innovative and inclusive, to strive to make an impact, and – of course – to have fun,” he says. “I know you’ll rise to the challenge. What you learn in FIRST will make you better prepared for the future and enable you to solve our toughest challenges.”

INFINITE RECHARGE is part of the 2020 FIRST season, FIRST RISE, powered by Star Wars: Force for Change. FIRST has teamed up with Lucasfilm and parent company Disney as part of the Star Wars: Force for Change philanthropic initiative to inspire the next generation of heroes and innovators, creating a place where collaboration and collective wisdom can elevate new ideas and foster growth.

Working with adult mentors, students have limited time to design, build, program, and test their robots to meet the season’s engineering challenge. Once these young inventors build a robot, their teams will participate beginning in late February in one or more of the global 173 Regional and District events that measure the effectiveness of each robot, the power of collaboration, and the determination of students.

In INFINITE RECHARGE, two alliances work to protect FIRST City from approaching asteroids caused by a distant space skirmish. Each alliance, along with their trusty droids, race to collect and score Power Cells in order to energize their Shield Generator for maximum protection. To activate sections of the Shield Generator, droids manipulate their Control Panels after scoring a specific number of Power Cells. Near the end of the match, droids race to their Rendezvous Point to get their Shield Generator operational in order to protect the city.

By participating in FIRST, students gain the confidence to explore the innovation process while learning valuable science, engineering, technology, teamwork, and problem-solving skills. FIRST Robotics Competition participants are eligible to apply for more than $80 million in scholarships from colleges, universities, and technical programs.

FIRST is a robotics community that prepares young people for the future through a suite of inclusive, team-based robotics programs for ages 4-18 (PreK-12) that can be facilitated in school or in structured afterschool programs. To find FIRST Robotics Competition events and/or teams, visit http://www.firstinspires.org/team-event-search.

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