Mini-Urban Challenge (Jan. 2011)

Through the Cyber Innovation Center’s efforts, Bossier City was named a regional competition site for the annual ION Mini-Urban Challenge.  The Mini-Urban Challenge weaves together ideas from the DARPA Grand Challenge automated car race and the Institute of Navigation’s (ION) own Robotic Lawn Mower Competition.   The purpose of this competition is to challenge high school students to work in teams of 3-10 students to design and operate a robotic unmanned car built from a Lego Mindstorms NXT kit that can accurately navigate through a Lego city.  Students will learn invaluable problem solving and analytical thinking skills while pushing the bounds of their own creativity.  The CIC has partnered with Sci-Port: Louisiana’s Science Center, Bossier Parish Community College, and Louisiana Tech University to add “mini-challenges” to the competition.

Teams that participating in the inaugural event (Jan. 2010) included the following high schools: Airline, Benton, Bossier, C.E. Byrd, Captain Shreve, Cedar Creek, Haughton, Lakeview, Mansfield, Minden, Natchitoches Central, N. DeSoto, Parkway, Ruston, Southwood, St. Mary’s, and West Monroe in Louisiana and Texas Early College in Texas.

Cyber Slam (Jan. 2011)

In partnership with Louisiana State University Shreveport, the CIC will host the first annual Cyber Slam competition in January 2011.  This competition will offer high school students with a high energy, dynamic and highly competitive learning environment.  The competition takes places over a 48 hour window.  Participants will be presented with a theme and then given 48 hours to develop a short animated film.  The competition is modeled after a national competition called FJORG!

Regional Autonomous Robotics Competition (May 2011)

This event, formerly known as Northwest Louisiana Autonomous Robotics Competition, continues to grow! In early May 2010, 50 teams from across north Louisiana descended on Benton Middle School for this annual event.  The CIC has joined forces with the competition committee to expand the competition to include teams from across Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi.  Each participating team is given a set of guidelines from which they must program an autonomous robot to complete a series of challenges. These challenges will require speed, precision, and agility. Students who compete not only learn programming skills, but also improve their problem solving and analytical thinking skills and creativity.

Click here to read the press release from the press release from the 2010 competition.

Cyber Storm (May 2011)

In partnership with the Cyber Innovation Center, Louisiana Tech University hosted the first ever Cyber Storm competition in May 2010.  Cyber Storm is a cyber security, network defense competition where teams were presented numerous challenges that required them to proactively defend their network.  This competition “feeds” into larger national network defense competitions.