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Research and Innovation

LTU-sponsored FIRST Robotics teams get first look at 2024 game, ‘Crescendo’

January 6, 2024

SOUTHFIELD—A complicated, musically themed contest in which robots must move plastic rings called “notes” around a basketball-court-sized game field, with bonus points for depositing them in receptacles called “amplifiers” and guiding their robots to star on a central “stage,” is the FIRST Robotics 2024 competition game.

That’s what 300 high school students, parents, coaches and mentors learned Saturday at Lawrence Technological University, as LTU hosted a game reveal party for the 10 FIRST Robotics teams it’s sponsoring in this year’s competition.

Called “Crescendo,” FIRST officials said in a global Webcast that the game is a mashup of two games proposed in prior years by FIRST teams. Like all FIRST games, it combines an early competition in which robots are autonomous with a later session when the robots are remote controlled to move the “notes” to the places where they’ll score the most points.

The FRC season will begin with District events, taking place the entire month of March. Those that qualify for State Championship will compete for state supremacy soon after, and some teams will be heading to Houston to participate in the World Championships in late April.

Lawrence Tech is sponsoring 10 teams that will receive $2,000 each from LTU’s marketing team, Yellow Flag Productions, money that will help them with expenses for the upcoming competition season. Before the reveal, students toured LTU’s Embedded Systems, Biomechanics, and Robotics Laboratories, as well as its Rockwell Automation/McNaughton-McKay Electric Co. Industry 4.0 Robotics and Industrial Automation Laboratory.

All FIRST Robotics students are eligible to receive the Lawrence Tech FIRST College Scholarship, totaling $12,000 over eight semesters.

Lawrence Tech is also one of just three Michigan universities to offer a Bachelor of Science in Robotics Engineering.

The teams attending Saturday’s reveal were:

* Team 573, Bloomfield Hills Mech Warriors

* Team 2960, Birmingham Automation Nation

* Team 3414, Farmington Hackbots

* Team 3538, Auburn Hills Robojackets

* Team 4737, West Bloomfield AtomiGators

* Team 7762, Warren De La Salle AutoPilots

* Team 8728, Troy Argonauts

* Team 9226, Riverview Gabriel Richard Pioneers

* Team 9255, Grosse Pointe Botmasterz (all girls team)

* Team 9618, Allen Park Tronarchs (rookie team)

Note: The lower the team number, the longer the team has been competing in FIRST Robotics.

Dean Kamen, holder of more than 400 patents, founded FIRST—an acronym for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology—in 1989. Among Kamen’s inventions: the first wearable medical infusion pump, and the Segway transportation device. Today, FIRST is a global nonprofit organization that prepares young people for the future through inclusive, team-based robotics competitions for ages 4-18 (grades PreK to 12). FIRST programs reach more than half a million students a year.

Lawrence Technological University is one of only 13 private, technological, comprehensive doctoral universities in the United States. Located in Southfield, Mich., LTU was founded in 1932 and offers more than 100 programs through its Colleges of Architecture and Design, Arts and Sciences, Business and Information Technology, Engineering, and Health Sciences, as well as Specs@LTU as part of its growing Center for Professional Development. PayScale lists Lawrence Tech among the nation’s top 11 percent of universities for alumni salaries. Forbes and The Wall Street Journal rank LTU among the nation’s top 10 percent. U.S. News and World Report list it in the top tier of the best Midwest colleges. Students benefit from small class sizes and a real-world, hands-on, “theory and practice” education with an emphasis on leadership. Activities on Lawrence Tech’s 107-acre campus include more than 60 student organizations and NAIA varsity sports.

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Use Your Cell Phone as a Document Camera in Zoom

  • What you will need to have and do
  • Download the mobile Zoom app (either App Store or Google Play)
  • Have your phone plugged in
  • Set up video stand phone holder

From Computer

Log in and start your Zoom session with participants

From Phone

  • Start the Zoom session on your phone app (suggest setting your phone to “Do not disturb” since your phone screen will be seen in Zoom)
  • Type in the Meeting ID and Join
  • Do not use phone audio option to avoid feedback
  • Select “share content” and “screen” to share your cell phone’s screen in your Zoom session
  • Select “start broadcast” from Zoom app. The home screen of your cell phone is now being shared with your participants.

To use your cell phone as a makeshift document camera

  • Open (swipe to switch apps) and select the camera app on your phone
  • Start in photo mode and aim the camera at whatever materials you would like to share
  • This is where you will have to position what you want to share to get the best view – but you will see ‘how you are doing’ in the main Zoom session.