Our 2013 Robot Zed has just returned from the FIRST Championships, just in time for us to have a few hours of work-time ahead of the May 18 MSHSL FIRST State Robotics Championships at Williams Arena. It has been a whirlwind these last few weeks. For a seventh time, the Green Machine was honored to represent Edina and Minnesota by attending the FIRST Championships in St. Louis, MO, this year as Regional Engineering Inspiration winners from the North Star event. The Green Machine played in the Curie Division for the first time in our team history, along with our friends from Eagan- 2220 Blue Twilight. Although the robot did not fare as well as we had hoped, Zed ended up placing 76 out of 100 teams. Zed got a lot of attention however for our 3D-printed augers from Stratasys, including a mention in the recent ASME Newsletter! Thank you ASME for stopping by our pit to learn more about our Frisbee-delivery system.
At Championships, Team 1816 once again brought our “be FIRST” campaign, in which we seek to find and highlight other FIRST teams promoting the Gracious Professionalism aspects of FIRST Robotics. Hundreds of buttons were handed out to teams and visitors across the four divisions, but the Championship “be FIRST”banner was awarded to Team 16-The Bomb Squad for their amazing assistance and Gracious Professionalism extended to all teams. At Championships, Team 1816 was honored to be an Honorable Mention for the first-ever Media and Technology Innovation Award sponsored by Comcast! This award, which required the submission of a Digital Media Plan, was judged by an independent panel of Comcast Judges ahead of the event. We thank Comcast and Ms. Sherita Ceasar, VP-Video Deployment Engineering, for stopping by our pit to personally hand us this award.
Team 1816 also congratulates Team 2052-KnightKrawler for being the 9th seed and advancing to the quarter-finals in the Newton Division for the first-time ever at Championships. We sincerely hope they enjoyed the additional decorations added to their pit! In the Galileo field, Team 2169-KING TeC and their alliance partner Team 2175 Fighting Calculators advanced all the way to the finals in their division! Congratulations also to Team 3018-Nordic Storm for winning the Creativity Award at Championship and also to Team 4539 KAOTIC Robotics, Frazee-Vargas, for winning a Newton Division Judge’s Award for Community Involvement! And, special congratulations to our Lakeville friends Fish in the Boat-Team 4140, who are the 2013 World Champions in the FIRST Tech Challenge, Ring it Up. They also won the PTC Design Award. Way to go Minnesota Teams!