CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

26 September 2013

Company News

PTC Continues as Exclusive CAD and Collaboration Sponsor of 2013-2014 FIRST® Tech Challenge Competition

Dedicated to promoting science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) educational opportunities, PTC today announced its continued support of FIRST ® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) and the FIRST ® Tech Challenge (FTC®). As a continued Strategic Partner of FIRST, PTC will sponsor 60 FTC teams expected to participate in this year’s competition.

As the exclusive CAD & Collaboration Sponsor of the FIRST Tech ChallengePTC provides its PTC Creo® product design software, PTC Mathcad® engineering calculations software and PTC Windchill® collaboration software free to all participating FTC teams.

An estimated 30,000 students on 3,000 teams around the world will participate in the 2013-2014 FTC game, called “FTC® BLOCK PARTY!SM. During the two-minute 30 second game, teams will be challenged to raise their team alliance flag up a flagpole, raise their robots off the ground using a platform pull-up bar, and end the match with a balanced pendulum to earn extra points. The object of the game is to score more points than an opponent by placing plastic blocks into pendulum goals. Throughout the FTC BLOCK PARTY! season, these young people will employ the same disciplines and complex problem-solving skills that will someday enable them to solve society’s greatest challenges.

“When students participate in the FIRST Tech Challenge, they are encouraged to think like engineers and scientists,” said Don Bossi, President of FIRST. “Our FTC students use PTC’s product design software to design their robots. This gives them an excellent opportunity to develop the problem-solving and engineering skills they will use in their careers.”

“The FIRST Tech Challenge is some of the hardest fun high school students will have as they learn how to work as a team to design, build and program robots to compete head to head against other teams using actual product design processes,” said John Stuart, senior vice president, global academic program. “PTC is a proud, strong supporter of FIRST because we consider FIRST to be one of the best investments we can make in educating those that are the future of our industry.”

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