Our 2008 team numbers are 08-0217 and 08-0218.

Research & Design Challenge

During the 1960s and 1970s twelve people, several robot landers, three cars, and two mobile robots operated successfully on the Moon. But for the past 35 years, there has been little going on the Lunar surface. On September 13, 2007, the X PRIZE Foundation announced a contest with prizes in the tens of millions of dollars for the first private organization to land on the Moon and operate a mobile robot that travels at least 500 meters from the landing site. That’s where Botball students can help. Your challenge is to create a conceptual design for a robot to help win this contest!

This year’s topic focuses on the Google Lunar X Prize Contest. We were expected to design a robot that will be eligible for the real contest. We won second place in the high school division. Please see our entries here and here.

Northern California Botball Competition

The competition starts on Feb. 23, 2008 at a two-day workshop at Foothill High School. Over 8 weeks, we will design, build, document, and program our robots. Then on April 19, 2008, we will compete with other schools from the region at Santa Clara University.

International Botball Competition

This year’s competition will be held at the Global Conference on Educational Robotics in Norman, Oklahoma. We have not yet made exact plans on participating, but certainly do hope to attend!