On behalf of the entire Corvallis High School Robotics Team, we thank you for showing interest in learning more about our team’s history, achievements and goals.

Our team competes in an organization called F.I.R.S.T. (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), which was founded by Dean Kamen in 1989. The goal of the program is to provide students with an education in technology and engineering that is not available through their schools. There are currently over 1300 high school teams that participate in the F.I.R.S.T. Robotics Competitions.

Each year F.I.R.S.T. develops a new “game” that the robots are built around. This game includes several different tasks that the robots needs to perform, and it is completely different each year. Examples of past game tasks include shooting balls through a hoop and lifting other robots off the ground. After learning about the new game in January, teams have six weeks to design and build a robot that accomplishes some or all of the tasks in the game. At the end of the six-week build season, the robots are shipped to the competition.

There are 41 regional competitions, and teams are allowed to choose which competition(s) they will attend. The competitions are three-day events, and they have between 35 and 60 teams participating. The games usually require the robots to play on teams of three (called “alliances”). There are two alliances – the red alliance and the blue alliance. Teams are randomly matched up with different partners and opponents for each of the ten qualifying matches. At the end of qualifying rounds, the eight teams with the best records choose two partners to form their alliance for the elimination rounds. These are double-elimination rounds (two wins to move on), and at the end of the day one alliance wins the regional championship.

Teams are assigned a number based on the order in which they joined F.I.R.S.T. Our team is Team 997, and we are currently in our seventh year. During the first week of the build season each year, our team discusses the different game elements and decides on a strategy to pursue. After this we develop robot concepts and prototypes before settling on a final design. The team is then divided into multiple groups that work on specific tasks. Although they work on separately, good communication between these groups is essential to develop a strong robot. We are very proud of the fact that our team is a student-run organization. The students decide on a robot concept each year, and they do nearly all of the work on the robot. We have five mentors that help us along the way, but they’re there to guide and teach us. In the 2007 season, our mechanical team started designing the entire robot in Autodesk’s Inventor program, which allows us to find and correct many design errors before we start building.

We build solid robots nearly every year, and we’ve won the Rookie All-Star, Innovation in Control, Team Spirit, and Creativity Awards. In the 2007 season we did exceptionally well; being on the winning alliance teams at both the Pacific Northwest and Davis/Sacramento Regionals. During the five weeks of regionals, Team 997 was one of only nine teams that won two competitions. For winning a regional, we earned a spot in the Championship competition, which was held in Atlanta, GA from April 12-14.

The robot costs about $3500 to build, and we also pay $10,000 to attend two regional competitions each year. We make this possible by getting as many sponsors as possible, but as our team expands we work much harder on fund raising. After qualifying for the national competition in early March of 2007, we had only a few weeks to raise $15,000, which helped us cover the $23,000 required for the entry fee and travel expenses of the team.

We believe that the success of our team is partly due to our organization. Our build season is well-structured, and we are equally well prepared at the competitions. We have four students on the pit crew, which fixes and tunes the robot between matches, and four students on the alliance team, which controls the robot on the field. The other eight to ten students are on the scouting team; they watch all of the matches and record how well each robot performs. This is vital if we are one of the top eight teams and we need to pick two partners for the final rounds. The scouting team provides a list of the best robots that our team captain uses for alliance selection. Our professional scouting system is one of the major reasons that we were so successful this year; without strong partners, our robot wouldn’t have made it through the elimination rounds.

Although our team has enjoyed a great deal of success, there is room for growth and improvement. One of our previous goals was to recruit more females, because they made up less than 20% of our team. We spent three weeks setting up and holding meetings specifically to recruit girls from our high school, now the female attendance comprises 33% of our team. We have also developed an animation group within the team. There’s an animation contest each year, but we have never had enough students to work on an entry until this year. Our team is working harder on spreading the ideas of F.I.R.S.T. throughout our community. We are hoping to present the robot at local middle schools, as well as at various community events during the off-season.

If you have any questions about our team, please feel free to contact:

• Al Baily (head mentor): albaily@comcast.net
• Tim Lykins (Student President): timlykins@gmail.com