Panther Prowl Robotics Event Coming to Florida Tech Sept. 28

MELBOURNE, FLA.—Panther Prowl, an off-season FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition, will be held Saturday, Sept. 28, 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. in the Florida Institute of Technology Clemente Center. About 700 high school student on 27 teams from across Florida are expected to participate in the event, which is designed as training for the annual FIRST event in January. Among the teams are seven from Brevard County. Panther Prowl is free and open to the public and members of the media. Video recording and live broadcast are also permitted.

The intent of Panther Prowl is to offer teams the opportunity to train their pit crews and drive teams before the regular season starts in January.

The robots will play a Frisbee game in which they score Frisbee disks into goals. At the end of the match, robots will gather at 12-foot pyramids where the 140-pound robots will have to climb steel rungs for bonus points.

Brevard County teams come from Palm Bay, Melbourne, Rockledge, Cocoa, Merritt Island and Titusville. For more information, contact Cody Harris at charris2010@my.fit.edu or at (321) 385-7365. Information is also available on the event website at http://floridatech.orgsync.com/org/firstatfit.

The FIRST Robotics Competition is a unique varsity sport of the mind designed to help high school-aged students discover how interesting and rewarding the lives of engineers and researchers can be. The FIRST Robotics Competition challenges teams and their mentors to solve a common problem in a six-week timeframe using a standard kit of parts and a common set of rules. Teams build robots from the parts and enter them in competitions.