FIRST® Kicks Off World's Largest Celebration of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math for Students

This week, more than 15,000 students from around the world traveled to Houston, putting their innovation skills to the test at the annual FIRST Championship Presented by Qualcomm Incorporated, held at the George R. Brown Convention Center, Minute Maid Park and Discovery Green. 
The four-day event, attended by nearly 30,000 people, came down to a heart-pounding conclusion Saturday night in front of thousands of cheering fans at Minute Maid Park when teams from FIRST® Robotics Competition and FIRST® Tech Challenge competed in match finals. Four teams from Atascadero, California; Tucson, Arizona; Seattle, Washington; and Berkeley, California earned the FIRST Robotics Competition Winning Alliance award for this year's game, FIRST STEAMWORKSSM. Teams from Sun River, Montana; San Diego, California; and Pearl, Mississippi, won the FIRST Tech Challenge VELOCITY VORTEXSM Winning Alliance. 

Over 15,000 students, ages 6-18, participated in FIRST Championship Houston.   Full Article & Results:

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3D Vision: Ensenso B now also available as a mono version!

3D Vision: Ensenso B now also available as a mono version!

This compact 3D camera series combines a very short working distance, a large field of view and a high depth of field - perfect for bin picking applications. With its ability to capture multiple objects over a large area, it can help robots empty containers more efficiently. Now available from IDS Imaging Development Systems. In the color version of the Ensenso B, the stereo system is equipped with two RGB image sensors. This saves additional sensors and reduces installation space and hardware costs. Now, you can also choose your model to be equipped with two 5 MP mono sensors, achieving impressively high spatial precision. With enhanced sharpness and accuracy, you can tackle applications where absolute precision is essential. The great strength of the Ensenso B lies in the very precise detection of objects at close range. It offers a wide field of view and an impressively high depth of field. This means that the area in which an object is in focus is unusually large. At a distance of 30 centimetres between the camera and the object, the Z-accuracy is approx. 0.1 millimetres. The maximum working distance is 2 meters. This 3D camera series complies with protection class IP65/67 and is ideal for use in industrial environments.