A FIRST competition season has a momentum and schedule vastly different from the one we have during the 6-week robot build period. Team 1816 is truly in the midst of competition season, and although the Iowa Regional is just days away, our outreach events do not stop.
Now, we’re getting everything packed and ready for the Iowa Regional on March 24-26. This is the first time an FRC regional has been held in Iowa. All of the events are webcast, with distribution from NASA. You can find the Iowa event NASA Results | Iowa Regional Results. Please cheer us on from home or in-person in Cedar Falls. We’re very excited to see what this competition will hold!
On Thursday, March 17th, The Green Machine made a guest appearance on the Kids Clubhouse, staged within the Star Studio at the Minneapolis Children’s Hospital. Since Thursday also happened to be St Patrick’s Day, our green uniforms were perfectly fitting. There, we showed off Zephyr and participated in a series of games led by “The Dude,” including dancing! Later that same evening, we ran a night of STEM activities for Cub Scout Pack 168, including penny barges and marble relays and, of course, a robot demo. Keeping the trailer packed, our next destinations included the annual school carnivals at Concord and Creek Valley, two of the six public elementary schools in our district. We provided a tower building challenge at Concord and set up a robot demo at Creek Valley. Both the activities and the robot demo attracted a lot of attention from kids and their parents. It was a good opportunity to talk about the future of FIRST and STEM in Edina, as well as promoting our Introduction to LEGO Robotics summer camps.
In the meantime, our builders and programmers have been busy trying different ideas on our practice robot. Unfortunately, our robot, Zenith, ran into technical issues during the first portion of the Lake Superior Regional in early March. Our builders and programmers worked together to get our robot fixed and on the field. We competed on the fourth-seeded alliance and finished as semi-finalists! In addition, we won the Entrepreneurship Award in recognition of our 2016 Business Plan. At the event, Team 1816 was honored to meet with FIRST President Don Bossi and Air Force Colonel Marcus Johnson. Several Team alumni, home from college for spring break, joined us and helped cheer us on!