The West Windsor-Plainsboro High Schools’ FIRST Robotics Competition Team 1923 – the “MidKnight Inventors” – would like to publicly thank everyone who has contributed to our team’s success over the past two months. Competing with radio-controlled robots in a rigorous game modeled after sports championships, our team competed in this year’s New Jersey Regional FIRST Robotics Competition and qualified as the number three seed out of 61 high school teams from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, California, Canada, and Brazil. The MidKnight Inventors then won the Northeast Utilities Connecticut Regional at the end of March after entering the finals as the tournament’s number one seed. We will next represent WW-P High Schools North and South at the FIRST Championship in St. Louis April 28 through 30.
Every year FIRST designs a different game involving new challenges to test our engineering skills, strategic thinking and ability to work as a team. In January, all teams receive only the minimum parts to build a robot and a rules manual for the competition. How the robot is designed, how it accomplished tasks to score points and how it is programmed are all left to students. This year’s competition is called “LOGO Motion. The MidKnight Inventors use our 120 pound robot to earn points by hanging as many triangle, circle and square pieces of the FIRST logo as possible during each two-minute match. This year bonus points can be earned by successfully deploying an independent “mini-bot” from inside of the larger robot to climb a ten-foot vertical pole at the end of the match.
Building the 2011 robot!
FRC Team 1923 consists of over forty students from West Windsor-Plainsboro High Schools North and South and is completely funded by our communities. This year, our team built the robot in a beautiful storefront at 64 Princeton-Hightstown Road that was graciously donated by Windsor Plaza Revitalization by Cyzner Properties. Through the efforts of the West Windsor-Plainsboro Education Foundation, the team also received valuable grants from Bristol-Myers Squibb, Integra Foundation, Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, MIM Software, Novo Nordisk, Bank of America, the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District, and Montessori Connections as well as a number of other local businesses and individuals. Currently, Team 1923 is seeking to raise approximately $7,000 to offset increased travel costs for attending the two remaining 2011 competitions. To see a complete list of our sponsors, or to make a contribution to the team to support our upcoming trips to Connecticut and St. Louis, please visit our web site at http://firstrobotics1923.org/sponsors or send us an email at info@firstrobotics1923.org.
Again, FIRST Robotics Team 1923 would like to thank everyone who has helped us “engineer success” this year and we hope to continue to represent West Windsor and Plainsboro well in this year’s competition and in years to come!
Kelsey Stevens and Jason Marcus
FRC Team 1923 Co-Captains
On behalf of our entire team
