Photo by Anton Olsen
Yesterday’s opening ceremony was amazing. The parade of nations was the largest ever with more teams and more nations than last year. Two of new additions this year were the Cherokee Nation and Saudi Arabia. I’m sure there were more, but my mind isn’t very fresh after three 14 hour days.
The matches went much smoother yesterday as the students had a better understanding of what was expected of them. Today we’ll hit the very quick pace of three and a half minutes per match. This barely gives the referee time to count the score before we have to start the next field.
I totally missed the new game-unveiling, but I did see that it is called Gateway and involves some very interesting game elements. More information about next year’s game can be found on the VEX forum.
Today the Boy Scouts of America will be having a robotics workshop and awarding the first recipients with their badges. If you are interested in the merit badge, Dave Banks wrote a great article about it here: Boy Scouts Introduce Robotics Merit Badge.
We will finish the qualifying matches before lunch today. After lunch the top teams will select their alliances for the division playoffs. Once the division awards are done the winners will move on to the main arena around 4pm and play for the title of World Champions.
Stay tuned for more 2011 VRC World Champtionships news and follow along live on Twitter @VEXRobotics and the VEX Facebook page. Match schedules, scores, and rankings will be updated real-time on the Robot Events World Championship page. Video of each division will be broadcast live on UStream on the RECF-VEX Channel.
