[Kevin @ Apr 17th 2007 9:29AM]

I was actually at the event. This article is a little misleading. There wasn't 1 robot built by three teams but 3 separate robots, each built by one of the teams. Around 90 teams competed on 4 different fields for a day and a half, trying to place as many of their colored inter tubes (as seen in the image) on the "rack." The game consisted of 6 high school teams divided into two alliances of three teams, which then had 15 seconds of "autonomous" mode in which the players could not control the robots at all, followed by two minuets where the students drove the robot. At the end of the match, bonus points were awarded for raising the robots off the ground (15 points for 4-11 inches, and 30 for 12+ inches per robot raised). After the first day an a half of competing, the top 8 high school teams on each of the 4 fields of play were allowed to each pick two other teams to form an alliance that then competed in a set of competitions to determine the winner for each field. The winners from each field advanced to the finals, where the alliance mentioned above was the overall winner. It was a great event, and the head of DARPA and co-creator of YouTube came to talk to the kids.