The 2007 Robot lifting two other robots.
A FIRST Robotics team has an intense 6-week period from the first week of January through mid-February when a robot is designed and built to play FIRST's game of the year. Our team hosted the first-ever Minnesota FIRST Kickoff event and pre-Kickoff workshops in January 2007. Several of our team members and mentors were involved in presenting workshops geared toward new FIRST teams on January 5. The following morning, 300 students and mentors from 22 teams gathered for the FIRST Kickoff at Coffman Memorial Union at the University of Minnesota. The Kickoff is when FIRST announced their 2007 game, “Rack 'n' Roll,” via video simulcast to our location and similar venues across the U.S. and in seven other nations. Each registered team received a kit of parts at the Kickoff meeting.
Immediately after the kickoff, Team 1816 convened at its robot construction workshop to begin discussing design and strategy. During the following six weeks, we design, build, test, program (and modify, modify, modify!) our robot in a frenzy of activity. On February 20, the FedEx truck comes to take our carefully-packed and crated robot to the Wisconsin regional competition, which occurs March 7-10 in Milwaukee. Those teams that do exceedingly well at regional competition advance to the Championship Competition in Atlanta in April.
This year, The Green Machine is one of 30 FIRST Robotics teams in 20 states selected to pilot an alternative energy/fuel cell project. Coincidentally, the program is called “the Fuel Cell ‘Green Machine’ Pilot Program.” All teams participating in this four-part challenge are expected to take part in the Championship competition in Atlanta.
The fuel cell program (www.FirstFuelCells.com) requires teams to research and explore what fuel cells are, build and test a fuel cell system, design a game that can be played by fuel cell hybrid robots, and to insert the hybrid fuel cell system into a competition-ready robot.
So what does a FIRST Robotics team do when it's not building the robot? Plenty! One of the key responsibilities of every FIRST team is outreach, to connect with the community in a meaningful way. One of our team's goals has been to spread the word about FIRST Robotics and encourage the formation of other teams. This is especially important in Minnesota, which only had two teams in 2006. In late-September 2006, the team exhibited at the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) Summit for High School Students. We demonstrated our robot and our machine vision system, as well as talked extensively with students, parents, and teachers considering starting a new team. As a follow-up, we visited many area schools with our robot, answering questions and encouraging them to form teams. While we extend to all teams the opportunity to contact us for advise, we are actively mentoring three of the 14 new Minnesota teams: Southwest Minneapolis High School Team 2129, “Ultraviolet,” and Team 2052 “KnightKrawler” from Irondale Senior High School, New Brighton, MN, and Team 2220 “Blue Twilight,” Eagan High School, Eagan, MN.
Corporate sponsorship is an integral part of staging a FIRST team. In fall 2006, we contacted our 2006 sponsors and other corporations to seek funding for the 2007 season. The link between corporations and FIRST Teams is essential. Corporate sponsors provide not only funding, but also mentors. For many team members, meeting with mentors is their first contact with "real world" applications of math, science, and technology opportunities for future careers in these vital industries.
At the same time, The Green Machine welcomed new team members on board. We have a total of 35 students on our 2007 team. Together, we have been working to learn some of the fundamentals of designing and fabricating a robot. Now that the build season is here, we are ready to "Rack 'n' Roll"!!!