North Brunswick High School Creates Robot That Can Play Basketball

"Rasheed" can slam dunk like nobody's business and get the crowd going wild at North Brunswick High School basketball games. But he's not the 6-foot-5 star varsity star you might have in mind -- this basketball player is actually a 4-foot-tall student-made robot.

Rasheed -- the brainchild of North Brunswick's talented robotics team -- can pick up a ball on its own and launch a shot that arcs clearly into the hoop from the foul line. (Check out the video above to witness Rasheed's jaw-dropping skills for yourself!) The impressive accuracy of the robot's shots helped it to win an international robots competition held in St. Louis on last month, beating out over 3,400 other teams for the honor.

After winning local, regional, and statewide competitions, the team went on to wow the judges at the FIRST Robotics Competition. Rasheed nailed the performance of his career, scoring 14 out of 15 baskets in under three minutes.

Tom Ikus, a member of the North Brunswick robotics team, told the New Jersey Star-Ledger, "It’s full-time work. It’s like a varsity sport of the mind."

The afterschool robotics club from Middleton High School in Florida also won big at a student technology competition last month with their 42-pound device, "Meet the Beast!" In less than two minutes, the impressive "Beast" can collect and lift four crates filled with balls. And the "Landroids" team from Livingston, New Jersey won the #1 Inspire Award for being positive role models and embodying good sportsmanship, as well as earning top marks in all of the judging categories.

Until next April when the FIRST Robotics Competition returns, these teams and thousands of others from around the globe will put their heads together again to design and create their next robotic masterpieces.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story indicated that the North Brunswick team won the FIRST Tech Challenge Championship. In fact, it was the FIRST Robotics Competition.

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Comments

[Zoreta]

12:15 PM on 05/08/2012

A slight clarification- the robot shooting basketballs here was a robot for FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition). FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) is another competition put on by the same organization, but they are different competitions with different games- 'Meet the Beast' won FTC.

[ArmyMedic]

10:53 PM on 05/07/2012

I didn't see any dunks.. did I watch the wrong video?

[L-traon]

03:17 PM on 05/07/2012

many of you that have never heard of FIRST, first is For Insperation and Reconition of Science and Technology, North Brunswick high school didn't build the robot the team did, so don't think that only that high school is where all the genuises are, there are 4 different levels in FIRST robotics. from K-5 is FLL jr., from 6-8 is FLL, 9-12 is FTC, and 9-12 is FRC. they are not the only team out there. there are a total of 4410 FRC teams and counting that are all over the world, and that's just FRC.

[ZStott]

04:57 PM on 05/10/2012

Excellent point. There are literally thousands of students from many different age groups who participate in FIRST. They all are incredibly smart and work very hard throughout the season.

I think the reason this particular article focused solely on our team (25) and the Landroids is it seems that most of this article's content was taken directly from a different story done by a New Jersey newspaper.