What does it take to get a robot to, well, do the robot? Greater Rochester Robotics, a.k.a Team 340, is made up of 20 to 50 local high-school students who get a taste of that knowledge every day. The team - based out of Churchville-Chili, but home to students from Wheatland-Chili, Aquinas, and Brockport - has been hard at work preparing for the upcoming regional robotics competition taking place this weekend at RIT, an opportunity for the group to prove that it can build the best bots around.

Team 340 is part of an overarching robotics organization known as FIRST, started by Segway inventor Dean Kamen in the late 1980's. The group was created to foster the pursuit of scientific and engineering knowledge in students. Part of achieving this goal was the establishment of a teen robotics competition, whose upcoming regional competition will bring in teams from all over the state, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Canada. The Atlanta championship event in April even hosts teams from as far away as Australia.

Before that point, however, teams need to show that they possess the design skills and team work ethic to be at the top of the robotics game. And that game looks a lot like soccer. This year's game is called Breakaway, a robot variant of soccer where two teams try to score on each other. The first 15 seconds - yes, seconds; matches are extremely short and last only three minutes overall - of the game give the robots a chance to autonomously score goals on the other team. After that, the teams take over and go mano-a-mano via remote controls and robot-mounted cameras. The final 20 seconds of the match allow the robots a chance to winch themselves up from a bar suspended above the field for extra points.

Although competitive, the FIRST competition isn't just about mindlessly stepping on your opponents. Mentor Deanne Maffett is one of the adults that help the students with everything from programming to shipping the robot. "Don't get me wrong, the students want to win. But, that's not all that it's about," Maffett says. Teamwork and dedication are recognized at every turn, cementing into students some of the fundamentals they'll eventually need in the professional world. Team 340's own Chairman Award wins are especially indicative of that. According to Maffett, the award is given to the team whose conduct the judges believe should be emulated by others.

In addition to winning awards and learning real-world engineering and design skills, Maffet says students are eligible to win $12 million in scholarships to promote their enrollment into science- and engineering-related undergraduate programs. There are even smaller perks, like a recent move to waive Team 340 seniors' application fees for RIT.

If you want to see the robot action in person, join Team 340 as well as the 43 other teams that will be competing at RIT's Gordon Field House on Friday-Saturday, March 5-6, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. both days. Entry is free.

Any students interested in joining a FIRST robotics team should know that there are currently nine teams within Rochester alone, and many others just outside the area. For more information visit usfirst.org or team340.org.