January 2010 - Professional Consultants sponsors Avon, CT High School Robotics Team in FIRST Competition

 Professional Consultants is one of several corporate sponsors and engineering mentors for the Avon, Connecticut High School Robotics team, known as the "Uberbots". The team captured first place in the 2006,  2007 and 2008 FIRST United Technologies Northeast Regional Robotic Competition and was a semi-finalist from over 380 teams in the 2008 FIRST International Robotics Championship in Atlanta, GA. PROCON has proudly renewed its commitment to sponsorship for the 2010 season.

Dean Kamen, accomplished inventor, founded FIRST (an acronym "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology") in 1989 to inspire an appreciation of science and technology in young people, their schools and their communities. FIRST designs accessible, innovative programs to build self-confidence, knowledge, and life skills while motivating young people to pursue opportunities in science, technology and engineering. With the support of many of the world 's most well-known companies, the not-for-profit organization hosts the FIRST Robotics Competition for high school students on regional and national level.

 "Our society is in the middle of a crisis in science and technology, and FIRST is trying to change how our culture views these fields, " said renowned inventor of the Segway Human Transporter and FIRST founder, Dean Kamen. "We 're helping young people see scientists and engineers in the same light as their traditional heroes in sports and entertainment." PROCON president and architect Rich Goldberg added "most everyone today recognizes that science and technology is becoming critically important in our daily lives, especially in our ability to design, construct, and sustain the operation of buildings with dwindling resources. So it has become critically important to engage the next generation of architects and engineers at an early age in order to meet the daunting future challenges of our built environment".

The AHS Uberbot team is comprised of 30 dedicated students and adult mentors who, during the competition season, sometime work 5 nights and weekends to design and construct the robot, as well as raise funds for the team's operations, which is completely funded through sponsors and contributions. The 2007 robot not only featured a sophisticated computer controlled vision system to help the robot navigate automatically, but also a high-technology inspired shipping crate and functional workstation designed and constructed with Rhino 3-D modeling software under PROCON mentor guidance.

Learn more about the AHS Uberblots and FIRST at www.uberbots.org