For the past five years the NRC (formerly the SME Robotics Technology and Engineering Challenge) has seen continual growth and success with the support of organizations like Intelitek, Honda, SME Education Foundation, TODCO and more. This year the NRC has added three exciting events to further enhance their competition.

The first is a VEX only competition on April 16th. For this competition, they will be using the VEX Elevation competition and teams can qualify from the event to compete in the 2009 VEX Robotics Competition World Championship at the end of April.

The second event called AgBot was developed in partnership with Ohio 4-H and is open to elementary students as young as third grade. In this event students design, build and program a robot that completes agriculture based tasks such as delivering hay to the bull and planting a field. Typically these students will be using the LEGO robotics system for the building platform of this event. However, the building
platform is open so teams can try different ideas and concepts such as integrating other devices or developing their own robot from scratch. This event has been also accepted as the official 4-H robotics competition of the 2009 Ohio State Fair.

The final addition to the 2009 NRC is the Math Machines Challenge. In this event students will use a Math Machines ACV which is a mobile robot base that is controlled by a TI-83 or TI-84 calculator. The goal of this event is to bring math teachers and students that may not have considered robotics as vehicle for instruction into the competitive arena. For this event the NRC received a grant from Honda of America to provide robotic kits and training to 20 math and technology teachers in the hopes of getting robotics into current middle and high school math classes.

In all, the NRC offers thirteen competitive events in robotics to elementary, middle, high school and post-secondary students in the US.

The "Robot of the Year" award has been replaced with the "Honda Innovation Award" This award will include a $500.00 donation to the winning program. Judges from each of the 13 competition categories will nominate one entry to be judged for this award. The Honda Innovation Award judges will then select the overall winner from the 13 nominated entries. Each nominated team will receive a plaque to commemorate their outstanding entry and the winning team will receive a laser engraved award and a $500.00 check for their
robotics team. The teams selected for this award will have shown outstanding innovation and creativity in the design, construction, or programming of their robot or robotics
system.

The National Robotics Challenge has started a social networking site for teachers and students to share information and get help from other students and advisors as well as engineers and other professional contacts that may decide to join. People can post discussions, blogs, pictures, videos and more. Join by clicking: http://robots.ning.com/main/authorization/signUp

Once people are a member they can invite other people that to help answer questions or post interesting content.