BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - The UAB School of Engineering will host Blazer BEST robotics 2009 High Octane: Game Day Saturday, Oct. 17 at 8 a.m. inside Bartow Arena, 617 13th St. South.
The contest will pit middle- and high-school student teams from 26 Central Alabama schools and their built-from-scratch robots against each other in a one-day competition.
The event is open to the public and nearly 1,000 participants, their family, friends and school supporters are expected to attend.
Blazer BEST, the local contest hosted at UAB in conjunction with the national BEST Robotics competition, is a non-profit endeavor, providing free materials for teams to develop and build competition robots in the six weeks preceding the Game Day contest.
"The School of Engineering is extremely excited to be hosting our second annual Blazer BEST competition on the UAB campus," said Paul George, the UAB event's coordinator and the development director for the School of Engineering.
"We work throughout the year to coordinate the competition, and the School of Engineering with the help of its generous financial sponsors is proud to have supplied all of the robotics parts to the student teams so that they could create their competition robots and take on one another on the floor of Bartow Arena," George said.
Previous events connected to this year's Blazer BEST competition included Mall Day at the Riverchase Galleria Mall on Oct. 4. Mall Day was a chance for the teams to test their robots on the unique competition-day game floor a full two weeks before the official contest on Oct. 17.
Volunteer Importance
The Blazer BEST program at UAB relies heavily on volunteer support. Interested parties can help this year and in future years in a variety of ways:
MENTORS: Adult mentors from the Central Alabama engineering community are needed to serve as adjunct educators and advisors to guide student teams through the design and construction of their Blazer BEST robots during the design and assembly sessions.
JUDGES: Judges are needed for the Oct. 17 Game Day event. Judges will select the event winners, score their performance on the robotics competition course and grade the hypothetical business plans and marketing strategies the teams developed to bring their products to market, George said.
SPONSORS: Blazer BEST relies on financial support of generous benefactors. Gifts in any amount help provide the free BEST experience to students from more than 25 participating schools, George said.
Interested volunteers and sponsors should contact Lyn Lewis at 205-975-2425 or llewis@uab.edu.