HB Beal Secondary School, Lord Dorchester Secondary School, Oakridge Secondary School, and Parkside Collegiate Institute will compete in this year’s FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition.
FIRST is an international youth organization that aims to inspire students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields by holding competitions, challenges, and educational programs. The FIRST Robotics Competition, in particular, is designed to inspire high school students to become engineers.
The school’s teams will have to design, build, and program robots to go head-to-head against other teams in challenging field games.
The four Thames Valley schools will first participate in the Ontario Provincial Championships where the top 11 teams will move on to this year’s World Championships in Houston, Texas.
HB Beal, Parkside, and Oakridge have qualified for past World Championships on top of winning numerous awards.
This will be the first competition for Lord Dorchester’s new team, the eighth for both HB Beal and Parkside, and the eleventh for Oakridge.
This year’s theme is Rapid React and will only invite 450 teams from around the world to compete in the championships instead of the 800 teams that participated in 2019.