Edina Robotics FIRST Team 1816, The Green Machine, exhibited at the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) Summit for High Schoolers at the Science Museum of Minnesota on September 30, 2006. Over 1,000 high school students, parents, and educators attended the Summit; over 40 businesses and institutions of higher learning exhibited. Nine Edina student team members represented the team at the Summit to encourage the formation of more FIRST teams in Minnesota. Edina High School is the only public school in the state to have a team. In Wisconsin, there are 17 public school teams. The Edina team showed a video of last year’s experience in building a 5-foot tall robot and competing at the Wisconsin regional and National Championship competitions. The team demonstrated the ability of the machine vision system they built during the summer to differentiate between colors of light. Last year’s robot and trophies were also on display. The team will field its 2007 robot in March at a regional FIRST competition. Key sponsors of the team are: Medtronic Inc.; NASA; Edina Education Fund; the law firm of Schwegman, Lundberg, Woessner, and Kluth; and the EHS Parent Council.
