Comptetitions

FIRST is a competition that DARC has participated in for several years. FIRST's founders, Dean Kamen and Woodie Flowers, wanted to make competitions based around gracious professionalism. They have embraced this concept in their four current subcompetitions within FIRST: the FIRST Robotics Competition, FIRST LEGO League, Junior FIRST LEGO League, and FIRST Tech Challenge. DARC participates in the FIRST FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition) and has done well in the previous years. In 2009, entering as a rookie team due to their changed nominal status, DARC received the "All-Star Rookie Team" award, as well as an award for being the highest ranked rookie team at the end of the seeding rounds. Not only was DARC the highest ranked rookie team, but they were also the highest ranked team overall. Finishing second in the 2009 "Lunacy" competition, DARC did not advance to the national competition in Atlanta, Georgia, but this year DARC has received a "by" to the national competition due to their successes in 2009. Hopefully, DARC will continue being successful in this year's "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology" (FIRST) competition.

BEST, an acronym for Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology, is a nationwide competition in the United States in which high school and middle school teams must create a robot to accomplish the challenge of that year's competition. These challenges can range from "building an airplane" to "traversing a black hole". DARC is a relatively new entity in the BEST competition, having competed in only two competitions. Despite this fact, we have managed to place well the two years that we have competed, in large part due to the strong Austin High robotics program that DARC emerged from.