Whitewater High School Robotics Club

Howdy all. I just wanted to share with everyone something that I became involved with this last winter. The Whitewater High School started up a robotics club this year. There team is part of the FIRST Robotics Competition that has teams from all over the world. FIRST is a program that gets kids involved in the technology of the future. It gave the kids hands on experience with CAD designing, computer programing, electrical wiring, and building using hand and power tools. They also had to come up with strategies for the competition and do trouble shooting. I was asked if I would be a mentor for the kids helping with the building process (I think my wife and daughter had something to do with me being asked, due to my mechanical and fabrication experience). The robot had to perform several functions/tasks. It had to drive, carry a gear from one place to another, shoot balls into something, and climb 4ft up a rope. The team had only six weeks to build the robot starting January 7th. When the sixth week was up the robot had to be packaged up and they couldn't touch it until the competition. Luckily there were a few other mentors with past experience helping too. The competition they went to was Easter weekend in La Crosse. There had been different competitions going on throughout the US since the end of the six week build time. The competition was a lot of fun and also very busy. For there first year I thought they did pretty darn good. Hats off to the team for building a working robot, making it to the competition, and competing.  They overcame some challenges in the beginning, but got better each match they competed in. Unfortunately they didn't move on to the National Competition which is this weekend in St. Louis Missouri. I had a lot of fun and got to meet and work with some great kids.

Here's a video of one of there matches https://youtu.be/QH7p1FtGfzY

Thats great Rob. Youare surely a busy guy.

I'll bet it makes you feel really fortunate that you were part of this. To show that there is a lot to be said for skilled trades in order to go from a design to an actual working product. This shows there is a lot of different skills required in order to get the job done. I am sure that these young people are amazed at what it takes to produce a product for use.

                                         GREAT JOB TO ALL!!  

Thanks guys. The kids had a lot of talent and were eager/willing to try and learn new things. It was awesome to see the excitement from them as they progressed and saw the robot come together and start to work. They were also very creative both with the robot and having fun at the same time. For example, one day I had shown up to a work sessions and they had come up with nicknames for all the mentors. They were all fun to work with.