Team raising funds, readying robot for worldwide competition

“I can’t tell you how proud I am of these kids,” says Gail Drake about the Battlefield RoboCats’ recent win at the 2006 For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Robotics Competition. “This was the most prestigious award and we walked away with it!”

The RoboCats are a group of fifty or so students from Battlefield High School (plus one student from Woodbridge High School who drives out to participate with the team) who have come together to build a robot and market their team. After just completing their first robotics competition, the team walked away with the contest’s highest honors – the Rookie All-Star Award. Now, the team has earned the chance to compete in the U.S. FIRST/NASA Championship Event in Atlanta, Georgia, an international-level competition bringing together 360 teams from across the globe on April 27-29.

“The school’s first robotics team faced many challenges before and during the competition, but came out ahead of other rookie teams for this holistic award, which is based not only on the team’s full-size robot, but also on the production of a Web site, visual presentation, team spirit, and a host of other factors,” says Drake, a Battlefield High teacher who is leading the robotics team along with teachers Raymond Cotter, Michael Piccione, and Stephen Edgerton.

The big challenge for the team now is raising the funds to take the team down to Georgia for the competition. All of RoboCats’ sponsors, including NASA, Lockheed Martin, Micron, TKC Communications, Aurora Flight Sciences, TKC Global Solutions, and DeVry University, have lent tremendous support to the team during the initial build of the robot, both financially and through staff assistance. Additionally, the School Division’s Department of Career and Technical Education (CTE) has gone above and beyond to aid the student group. But the team is still $6,000 short for the competition, and that means a lot of fundraising work for the team between now and late April.

For now, the team is allowed to make a few minor modifications to their robot before they head down for the world competition. For the RoboCats, this means a few extra weeks to work on their autonomous code in hopes of improving the robot’s independent actions. Even though this first-year team has already surpassed most expectations, students and staff continue to create and design, readying themselves for another chance to take home a gold.

“Our entire goal for this competition is to go down there with the best robot possible,” says Drake.

To donate to the RoboCats or learn more about their efforts, visit the team’s Web site at www.battlefieldit.org/RoboticsWebsite.

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