National Robotics Week is April 7-15 this year, and there are tons of activities happening to help you celebrate. Locally, Instructables is hosting a Robot Block Party at the Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco on April 9, and Stanford is hosting another on April 11. You can search the event listing for an event near you.

The FIRST robotics regional competitions are continuing this weekend, followed by district championships and championships. Many of the FIRST events are being webcast, so you don’t even have to leave your home to watch, although robotics events are way more fun in person.

All of those events will just be getting you warmed up for RoboGames in San Mateo April 20-22. RoboGames has a competition for almost every type of robot: combat robots, fire-fighters, LEGO bots, hockey bots, walking humanoids, soccer bots, sumo bots, and even androids that do kung-fu. They will also be having a symposium again this year, with speakers on a wide range of robotics related topics. You can get your advance tickets now.

We spent the day yesterday in the pits with the teams participating in the 2012 Silicon Valley Regional FIRST Competition and brought back a whole heap of pictures. Thursday is fix, check and test day at the regional competitions. Each robot has been sealed up since the end of the build season and the teams bring them out and get them certified for competition and run them through practice matches.

The pits were extremely busy for most of the day, getting the robots ready for their practice rounds and repairing them afterwards. Team Gatorbotics was one of several local all girls teams. There were teams present from Mexico, Brazil, and several US states.

Safety was emphasized at all times, and no one was allowed in the pits without safety glasses. Volunteers checked each team’s safety plan and made sure they had all the required safety equipment and information.

Some pits were more organized than others. Team 115, Monta Vista Robotics had a beautiful hinged tool cabinet and storage rack with interior lighting. Tools were loaned freely between teams, and whiteboards were used to keep track of loaner tools and practice match schedules.

Robots were made from all kinds of materials and with all kinds of tools. Waterjets, CNC routers, laser cutters, mills, lathes, bandsaws, drill presses, welders, soldering irons and every imaginable hand tool were used to shape plywood, steel, aluminum, PVC, polycarbonate, acrylic, and rubber. The Cheesy Poofs had some of their powder coated spare parts on display.

There was a mobile machine shop just outside the pit area. The teams could bring their materials over and have them machined to their specifications. The operator lamented that there aren’t enough volunteer machinists to help out with this service.

Some teams put a lot of effort into decorating their robots. When not in autonomous mode, the robots were controlled wirelessly through a D-link router, which was a popular place to put stickers.

The logo for the Space Cookies looked great on their router. They were another of the all-girl teams.

Seeing the robots put through their paces in the practice matches was good fun. They’re competing Friday and Saturday at San Jose State University, so go and check them out! There are more regional competitions before the championships at the end of April, so check to see if there is one near you. You can also see many more pictures of the robots in our flickr set here.