Granite State Regional FIRST Robotics Competition took place in Manchester NH, between 2/28 – 3/2. 45 teams from the states of NH, MA, VT, NY, RI, CT, ME, and 2 Canadian teams from Ontario and Quebec, approximately 1300 FIRST Robotics students, over 200 volunteers, and over 1500 spectators participated in the event.

This year’s game was called Ultimate Ascent, where teams had to use Frisbees to score points into various goals on the opposite side of the field and also they gained points at the end of the competition if their robot climbed up and was hanging from 1 of 3 levels on the pyramid goal in the middle of the field.  Here is a link to the game manual for more information: http://frc-manual.usfirst.org/viewItem/3.  Teams compete in matches throughout the event, and have the opportunity to win several awards also outlined in the manual based on: their robot design, how they work together with other teams, how the exhibit gracious professionalism, how they advance respect/appreciation of engineers and engineering, how robust their business plan is, how innovative their robot is, the most outstanding rookie team, the most outstanding student member, and which teams exhibits safety best.

Regional events take place every week starting on 2/28/13 through 4/7 across the world.   A list of all the events can be found here: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/regional-events.  The culmination event is the Championship event taking place in St Louis Missouri on 4/24-4/27.

The event was sponsored by BAE Systems, which also sponsors several local teams as the company believes that the FIRST participants are the future work force.

Below you can see various photos from the event. Photos are credited to: Lipofsky.com