IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2015 - 10

Cao of the Techno
Titans in John's
Creek, Georgia. "We
want to do well, obviously, but we've really done our best if
5109 shows up,"
added Cao, explaining the fulfillment of
seeing the team that
he has mentored become successful in its
own right (Figure 3).
Equally imporFigure 3. Alliance team members strategize during the Peachtree
Regional competition. (Photo courtesy of Georgia FIRST.)
tant in the competition is the ability of a
sportsmanship as coopertition. At FIRST, team to develop and follow an effective
coopertition is displaying unqualified business plan where funds are raised to
kindness and respect in the face of fierce pay for the costs of the regional and
competition. There is simply no smack global competitions; an outreach protalk but no sticky- gram to ensure the teams are visible in
sweet platitudes the communities that support them; an
FIRST refers to this
either. Knowledge, ongoing recruiting program to attract
ideal of ultimate
competition, and students to science and technology;
empathy are com- and an overall focus on the quality of
sportsmanship as
fortably blended, the programs, robots, and pits. Nonencoopertition.
even as veteran gineering mentors are business profesteams take on the sionals who help guide students in this
role of mentor for rookie teams, which aspect of the competition, which often
later become competition.
engages students who would otherwise
"We always look forward to meet- have limited interest in robotics. In fact,
ing up with team 5109 (rookie Deus of the many awards given at the FIRST
Machina) because we've been mentoring FRC events, many are not focused on
them over the past year, and I'm really the competition but rather on the team
pumped to see what they can bring to attributes and overall quality of each
the competition," said senior Michael team's overall business plan.

Figure 4. The Georgia FIRST Robotics logo.
(Logo courtesy of Georgia FIRST.)

In Georgia, the Peachtree Regional,
held in Atlanta 26-28 March 2015, is
currently entering its 12th year of competition with over 60 teams competing
for a spot in the 2015 FIRST Championships. Activity in the Peachtree area has
grown to the point where an additional
regional competition is now being held
to ensure that all teams in the Georgia
region have the opportunity to compete
and gain a spot in the 2015 FIRST
Championship at the Edward Jones
Dome, 22-25 April 2015, in St. Louis,
Missouri. The second regional, the
Georgia Southern Classic, was held in
Perry, Georgia, from 27 February to 1
March 2015. If you are interested in
becoming a FIRST mentor for your local
team or would like to volunteer at a
Georgia FIRST, regional event or
become a sponsor, please visit www.
gafirst.org or contact Connie Haynes,
director of Georgia FIRST, at chaynes@
gafirst.org or Joel Edwards, KimberlyClark Corporation, the lead judge for
the FIRST Robotics Peachtree Regional
at jedwards@kcc.com (Figure 4).
For information on FIRST events
outside of Georgia, please visit www.
usfirst.org

President's Message (continued from p. 6)
RA-L will be an electronic publication
and will have
● a complete time of eight weeks, on
average, from submission to the publication decision
● a limit on article length (six pages),
favoring concise reports, a format to
which our community is accustomed
● the possibility of a closely integrated
peer-review process with ICRA (and
possibly other major conferences
later) in which the first-stage review
by the Letters Board serves as the
conference decisions, and a second
revision and re-review guarantees
10

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

a high capacity of articles per year, on
the order of one third of our current
ICRA proceedings.
In the vision of the RAS, RA-L will
be a venue where innovative ideas in
our field will be rapidly published,
teaming up with ICRA and other
major conferences to promote the
quality of the best contributions presented there to reach the highest standards of IEEE periodicals, without
compromising the timeliness of publication. The first issue of RA-L will be
published in January 2016.

●

Figure 1. From left: Raja Chatila and
Antonio Bicchi, VP Publications Activities.

MARCH 2015

the highest archival quality to published letters

http://www.gafirst.org http://www.usfirst.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2015