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2025 CURIOSITY OPEN ROBOTICS CHALLENGE

Presented by TIMKEN

Great Lakes Science Center is excited to host the 4th annual Curiosity Open: Robotics Challenge. This off-season robotics tournament will feature some of the best high school robotics teams from across the region.

During the regular season, several FIRST® Robotics Competition (FRC) Teams from northeast Ohio and western Pennsylvania successfully competed at major national and international robotics tournaments, and on Saturday, September 28th, the Science Center will welcome up to 24 of these FRC teams, and their fans, to this exciting, off-season invitational event. The floor of the Science Center's Special Exhibition Hall will be transformed into a robot battleground where teams will go head-to-head, tournament style, to see whose robots are the best!

For more information, or to register a team for the competition, visit the event website at: https://greatscience.com/explore/events-programs/curiosity-open.

2025 GAME OVERVIEW –

In CRESCENDOSM presented by Haas, two competing alliances, made up of three teams each, are invited to score notes, amplify their speaker, harmonize onstage, and take the spotlight before time runs out. Alliances earn additional rewards for meeting specific scoring thresholds and for cooperating with their opponents.

Each MATCH begins with a 15-second Autonomous period, during which time Alliance robots operate without guidance from their drivers/operators. Relying solely on their programming, ROBOTS score points by:

leaving their Starting Zones;
scoring Notes (game pieces) in their Speaker or Amp;
and by collecting and scoring additional Notes.

The remaining 2 minutes and 15 seconds of the MATCH is the Tele-Operated (TELEOP) Period, drivers remotely control the robots and continue to score points by collecting Notes from Human Players at their Source and scoring them in their Amp and Speaker.

During TELEOP, each time an alliance gets two (2) Notes in their Amp, the Human Player can amplify their speaker for 10 seconds. Notes scored in an amplified Speaker are worth more points than those scored in an unamplified Speaker.

A Human Player may choose to repurpose a Note scored in their Amp in cooperation with their opponent. If each alliance repurposes a note by hitting their COOPERTITIONTM Button in the first 45 seconds of TELEOP, all teams in the MATCH receive a COOPERTITIONTM Bonus Point (which influences their rank in the tournament) and reduces the number of Notes needed to earn the Melody Bonus.

As time runs out, ROBOTS race to get Onstage and deliver Notes to their Traps. Harmonizing Robots (i.e. robots sharing a chain) will earn a bonus. Robots can earn even more points if a Human Player Spotlights the ROBOTS on a chain by scoring a Note on the chain’s Microphone. The ALLIANCE with the highest score at the end of the MATCH wins!

ABOUT FIRST

The FIRST® Robotics Competition is an international engineering design challenge that combines the excitement of sports with the rigors of science and technology. Working under strict rules, with limited resources, and time limits, high school teams of up to 30 students are challenged to raise funds, design a team “brand,” hone teamwork skills, and build and program a robot to perform a set of prescribed tasks against a field of competitors. The Challenge (Game) changes each year and teams of young people (and their mentors) have just six weeks to solve the challenge, using a standard "kit of parts" and a common set of rules... It’s as close to “real world” engineering as a student can get, and the perfect training ground for life’s real-world challenges.

FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) was founded in 1989 by inventor Dean Kamen to inspire an appreciation of science and technology in young people. Based in Manchester, N.H., FIRST® designs accessible, innovative programs to build self-confidence, knowledge, and life skills while motivating students to pursue future STEM careers. FIRST® provides the FIRST® Robotics Competition for high school students, FIRST® Tech Challenge for grades 7-12, and FIRST® LEGO League for grades K-8.