From US FIRST:

MANCHESTER, N.H., Sept. 13, 2010, 5 p.m. Eastern ― FIRST^® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an organization founded by inventor Dean Kamen  to inspire young people’s interest and participation in science and technology, officially launched its 2010 FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC^®) season with an online Kickoff event unveiling this year’s game, GET OVER IT!^™
 
The FIRST Tech Challenge is an intermediate robotics competition, designed for 14 to 18 year-old high-school students, where teams of up to 10 students working alongside mentors, apply real-world math and science concepts to solve an annual challenge. Students compete and cooperate in team alliances at sport-type tournaments that are ultimately helping to create the next generation of technology leaders. Through their involvement with FIRST, students discover the rewards of collaboration, develop a deeper understanding of innovation and engineering, and learn the importance of Gracious Professionalism.^™

“All of the technology incorporated into this year’s FIRST Tech Challenge game carries with it the potential to improve and solve many of tomorrow’s toughest problems today,” said Dean Kamen, FIRST founder and CEO of DEKA Research & Development. “We devised a game where the robots must face an unstable surface environment in order to reach their objective and locate enhanced targets to increase their scoring. The game typifies the kind of real-word approach that our students may be called upon to solve,” he added.

More than 15,000 high-school-aged students are expected to participate in this year’s competition, in which the object of the game will be to score more points than your opponent alliance by emptying baton dispensers filled with 6-inch long PVC tubes and scoring them in stationary and rolling goals.

According to FIRST president Jon Dudas, “FIRST Tech Challenge involves all of the same hurdles facing world-class innovators. It encompasses the same types of design and engineering decisions engineers are applying to save lives, improve the quality of life, and protect the environment.”  …

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Read the full release at http://usfirst.org/aboutus/content.aspx?id=18052 , and stay up follow along with all the excitement at FTCs Facebook page and the FTC website.