The Scientia Foundation and the UVic-UCC, sponsored by Girbau Group company, have agreed to organize the robotics competition FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) at the national level for the next three years. This year 2019 the competition will be held on April 5 and 6 at the American School of Barcelona (Esplugues de Llobregat), while the next two courses will be held at UVic-UCC. This tournament will have both national and international teams.

FIRST Tech Challenge is a robotics competition for young people aged between 16 and 20, which comes from US FIRST being and additional step beyond FIRST Lego League Junior (for children aged 6 to 9) and FIRST Lego League (10 to 16). 

UVic-UCC organizes FLL competitions since 2012. On the other hand, UVic-UCC also has experience in the preparation of teams to compete at the FTC (in 2014 UVic team “Garrins Metàl.lics” reached the international FTC final held in Saint Louis, Missouri). 

FTC teams, made up of a maximum of 15 people, and two or three mentors, design, create, test and program autonomous robots and are operated by drivers that have to perform a series of missions and tasks in a space of 3.66m x 3, 66m, in accordance with a world-wide challenge that is renewed every year.

The challenge proposed for this year is called “Rover Ruckus” and refers to the exploration of the surface of an extrasolar planet with a rover robot.