More than 42,000 high school students in 1,680 teams from 10 countries are competing in the 2009 FIRST Robotics Competition. Twenty thousand mentors have volunteered to assist them. The students have six weeks to design, build, and test robots to compete in regional competitions that measure the effectiveness of each robot, the power of collaboration, and the determination of the students. All the source code for the software control system that the teams program to operate their robots is available to students on the CollabNet platform, enabling the teams to be self-supporting and to contribute code that they develop to the less-experienced teams.
"CollabNet has provided our competition's students with cutting-edge, commercial-grade technology, giving them real-world experience with the same tools used by teams of professional software developers and helping them learn valuable skills they will carry into the workplace," said Paul Gudonis, president, FIRST. "CollabNet's participation as a Diamond Supplier furthers our goal to inspire energy and enthusiasm for science and technology."
"62,000 people across 10 countries using CollabNet SourceForge Enterprise to develop robot software -- that's a compelling image that demonstrates the power of our platform to enable collaboration among distributed teams," said Bill Portelli, president and chief executive officer, CollabNet. "We're pleased to be able to support the FIRST competition and to introduce the student competitors to the power of CollabNet software."
Student teams that win in regional events will advance to the FIRST Championship in Atlanta, Ga., April 16-18, 2009. Participating students are eligible to apply for more than $9.7 million in scholarships offered by leading universities, colleges, and companies.
About CollabNet
CollabNet is the leader in application lifecycle management ( ALM) platforms for distributed software development teams. CollabNet SourceForge Enterprise is the industry's most open ALM platform, supporting every environment, methodology, and technology. With an integrated suite of easy-to-use tools that share a centralized repository, it is the only ALM platform that enables a culture of collaboration, substantially reducing the cost of software development. As the corporate sponsor of the open source Subversion project, the best version control and software configuration management ( SCM) solution for distributed teams, collaborative development is in our DNA. Millions of users at more than 700 organizations, including Applied Biosystems, Capgemini, Deutsche Bank, Oracle, Reuters, and the U.S. Department of Defense, have transformed the way they develop software with CollabNet. For more information, visit www.collab.net.
Media Contact: Christian Danella Prequent, Inc. (for CollabNet) +1 (408) 275-6488 office +1 (415) 350-4830 mobile Email Contact