Inventor Dean Kamen will launch the 2013 season of the FIRST Robotics Competition on Saturday, January 5, with a worldwide kickoff event that announces details of the robotics competition game that will be featured at the new Crossroads Regional, hosted by Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and the city of Terre Haute on April 4-6.

Teams of students in grades 9-12 will be shown this year's robotics game field and challenge for the first time, and will receive a new kit of parts made up of motors, batteries, a control system, and a mix of automation components-but no instructions.

Each team will have six weeks to design and build robots to meet this year's engineering challenge at Rose-Hulman's Sports and Recreation Center.

Kamen founded FIRST in 1989 to inspire an appreciation of science and technology in young people. The FIRST Robotics Competition challenges high school students-working alongside professional mentors-to design and build a robot of their own, and compete in a "Sport for the Mind" that measures the effectiveness of each robot, the power of teamwork and collaboration, and gracious professionalism. Students build and program their own robots against a field of competitors and experience the excitement of science, technology, engineering, and innovation.

For the first time, Rose-Hulman will have one of the 77 regional and district competitions. Fifty teams of 25 students or more will participate. Teams registered for the Crossroads Regional will come from across Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, Wisconsin, and West Virginia. These teams have partnered with such companies as NASA, General Electric, The Boeing Company, Nike, Rolls-Royce, Caterpillar, Rockwell Automation, Allison Transmission, and Cummins.