For some students, spring is when they start day dreaming about their summer break, and thinking about what to do with their time away from school. But for many of the leading robotics students, to put it shortly, spring is when it get's real. At ICS we track 15 different national robotics competitions available for high school students. We consider a handful of these competitions to be the "Big 5" in high school student robotics, including: FIRST Robotics Competition, Vex Robotics Competition, Best Robotics, BotBall, and the National Robotics Challenge. Of course there are many other great robotics competitions too, with different rules, specialized themes, or specific areas of focus (for example, the MATE Underwater ROV competition).

Within the Big 5 competitions, three National or International championships happen in April! And one of the others has its season of regional qualifiers happening March through May with its finals in July. Only one of the Big 5 robotics competitions has their final tournaments in the fall (Botball with all the main tournaments happening in December). 

So we're expecting some big changes in the Robotics leaderboards after the end of April. Want to follow the action? Here's what's coming up:

• April 12-14: National Robotics Challenge Championship
• April 18 - 21: FIRST Robotics Houston Championship
• April 25 - 28: FIRST Robotics Detroit Championship
• April 25 - May 1: Vex Robotics Global Finals
• March - May: Botball Regional Qualifier Tournaments

We'll be keeping an eye on all of these tournaments to explore which schools and states have been taking the lead in student robotics for this year! So stay tuned as we review the best student robotics performances of this season!