Turning Kids into Science and Technology Heros
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| Welcome | Minnesota FTC hosts the Minnesota FIRST FTC Championship Tournament and is supported by the Prior Lake Robotics Club KING TeC. Winners of the tournament have an opportunity to advance to the World Competition in St. Louis Missouri and get to compete with the best robot builders from around the world. We hope you enjoy the many useful links and informative references for your FIRST Robotics experience. On these pages you will find information on how to start a team, what it takes to compete in an FTC tournament, where to register and purchase the base FTC robotics competition kit and much more.
The Minnesota Championship Tournament will again be held this year at the Prior Lake High School on Saturday, February 23th, 2013 with optional set-up the night before. The game announcement from FIRST was on September 8th, 2012 so there is be plenty of time to design and build your robots with time left for practice and strategy development. We hope to have a couple of group sessions to help new teams get up and running quickly this year and look forward to a great season.
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| The Competition | This year’s game competition was announced on September 8th, 2012. Every year there is a new game design and the announcement is always highly anticipated.
To see this year’s game animation, click HERE.
To link to this years competition documentation page, click HERE. It contains the game manuals, Kickoff video, field drawings and much more.
To register for this years competition see Team Resources below.
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| Team Resources | The following are helpful links for use in the competition.
You must register with FIRST in order to be authorized to compete in a Championship event and to order the regulation competition robot kit.
For a step by step guide on the registration process, click HERE
To Register your team with FIRST and be authorized to compete and link to the supplier to order your base robotics kit click HERE
Registration for the Minnesota FTC Championship Tournament is now OPEN. Last year we filled our tournamet slots early so register soon to reserve your place in the tournament. To access this years registration click HERE.
Link to Lego Tetrix to order additional discounted FTC parts click HERE.
To Link to the FIRST FTC Robotics Forum click HERE.
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| Starting a Team | Starting a new team is fun and exciting. The robot platform for FTC is very robust giving the students great depth in their creative opportunities and students will learn real programming with three language options to choose from. Teams form an alliance with another team and compete against other alliances. These alliances change so that your current alliance partner may become your next opponent. This builds spirited competition and cooperation among all participants. Team sizes are recommended not to exceed 12 students plus their mentors and coaches allowing students to specialize, divide and eventually conquer. Average team size is 7 - 9 students which provides for a good activity level for all involved.
The costs in starting a new team are moderate, especially when compared to an FRC team.
The following sample budget is for a typical new team, purchasing one FTC Competition Kit and participating in one event. If your team chooses to purchase an additional kit and/or participate in multiple events, the fees would vary accordingly. The Minnesota FTC Championship Tournament fee is $275. Other venues will be different. Travel costs will vary due to the distance and time needed to travel to an event. Below is a list of expenses for "Last Years" competition. This years expected expenses will be updated after Kickoff.
2011/12 FTC Program Registration Fee $275
This fee enables teams to participate in official FIRST Tech Challenge tournaments. Teams can participate is several tournaments with a paid "Event Registration" fee to each event.
2012/13 FTC Competition Kit $715 with Samantha communications module
Resource Kit $199 - Highly recommended
These fees buy your base kit of parts including the NXT micro controller and licenses for three programming languages.
Event Registration Fee MN $275
Travel Costs - food, lodging, gas, etc $0 - $500
Team T-shirts (optional) $0 - $150
Additional kit items (optional) $0 - $500
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