AUBURN – On Saturday, Dec. 8, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Auburn University’s Beard-Eaves Memorial Coliseum, 46 teams of middle and high school students from across the eastern U.S. will participate in the 2007 South’s BEST Robotics Regional Championship. These teams are the winners of ten local competitions held in nine states in October. This event is open to the public.

South’s BEST is co-sponsored by the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering and College of Sciences and Mathematics at Auburn University.

Since September, when BEST teams across the nation received free kits of standardized parts and the details of this year’s game, students have designed, built and competed with their robots at their local competition sites. A second phase of the competition will test each team’s ability to market its creations using presentations, notebooks, displays, t-shirt designs and spirit.

Visitors will also have a chance to view a NASA display and Mars Rover as well as a display by one of the nation’s largest manufacturer’s of industrial robots.

For more information: www.southsbest.org
Competition results and video/phone downloads will be posted to southsbest.org on Saturday evening.

AUBURN – Astronaut Nancy J. Currie will discuss the use of robots in space exploration on Friday, Dec. 7, at 6:30 p.m. in Auburn University’s Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum. The public is invited to attend this free event.

Currie’s talk is part of the 2007 South’s BEST Regional Robotics Championship in which 46 teams will compete on Saturday, Dec. 8, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in AU’s Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum.

Both NASA and a manufacturer of industrial robots will provide exhibitions and a Mars Rover will be on display.

Currie, an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at North Carolina State University, has more than 25 years of experience in aviation, space operations and engineering. A retired Army Colonel and Master Army Aviator, she has logged more than 4,000 flying hours in a variety of rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft. A veteran of four space shuttle missions, she has accrued 1000 hours in space.

She is deputy director of the Johnson Space Center Engineering Directorate, which provides a variety of services supporting human spaceflight programs such as the Space Shuttle, International Space Station and Constellation.