For one Saturday afternoon each build season, The Green Machine puts down its tools and welcomes the community to come see first-hand what we’re building for the FIRST competitions. On Saturday, Jan 21st FIRST Team 1816 hosted the annual SPARK (Sponsor and Public Appreciation Recognition and Kudos) Day. This year, we again greeted more than 100 people who came to tour the team’s space within the Edina High School workshop and classroom at Valley View Middle School, where we keep our computers. The prototype of our 2012 robot, ZEPHYR, was on display, along with demonstrations from each of our subteams and how they are contributing to the team’s success. Visitors were mesmerized by the consistency of ZEPHYR-the-prototype’s ability to score at the top of the multi-tiered basketball hoops.
Team members were kept busy throughout the afternoon, acting as tour guides and explaining the many features of the robot as well as this year’s game, Rebound Rumble. Cookies in hand, many visitors forgot to munch while engaged in discussion about the prototypes and presentations by our Computer Aided Design and Maya Animation subteams. Animation offered a full storyboard of its upcoming entry to the 2012 3D Animation contest, while CAD displayed working models of our robot’s pieces and parts. Programming decided to stay upstairs by the robot, with laptops working on JAVA, LabVIEW and C/C++ coding schemes.
We couldn’t do any of this without our sponsors help! Edina Robotics FIRST Team 1816 formally thanks our 2012 Sponsors for making all of what we do possible. Thank you to Medtronic Inc., our founding sponsor since 2006; Dow Water Solutions, LifeTime Fitness, CrossTown Surgery Center, Graco, Sebesta Blomberg, Stratasys, 3M Co., College of St. Scholastica, Southdale Family Dentistry, Banners to Go and Edina Public Schools.