Robotics Challenge Scholarship Deadline Approaching

The 2018 FIRST^® Robotics Competition officially kicked off back in January. Teams have been hard at work designing and building their machines, finding mentors, and learning more about this year’s competition. Many NFPA members use this program as an opportunity to work as mentors to local students and get them interested in pneumatics, a method of motion control which is often used in competition robots.

In recognition of this opportunity to increase interest in fluid power education, NFPA became an Alliance Partner with FIRST^® Robotics. As an Alliance Partner, NFPA is a provider to the FIRST^® Scholarship program. This year is the second year that NFPA is offering one merit-based scholarship for $40,000 ($10,000 per year for four years) to a high school senior who participates on a 2018 FIRST^® Robotics Competition Team or National Robotics League Team and uses fluid power in his or her competition robot. This scholarship may be used for an engineering course of study at any accredited technical college or university in the United States. The goal of the scholarship is to bring awareness of fluid power’s role in robotics to high school students and to stimulate increased use of fluid power products in the competition.

Applications for the scholarship are due May 1st. Be sure to share this opportunity with FIRST^® teams in your community and let us know if you are mentoring a team! Applications can be filled out online at http://nfpahub.com/fpc/robotics-challenge.