Genesee Robotics Area Youth Team    Leviathons Team 1322

                                   Member of the Mid-Michigan Robotics Alliance           Fenton, Michigan

B K SIGNS

Fear Our

 Bubbles

 First Tech Challenge

 FIRST Tech Challenge, formally FIRST VEX Challenge

We used it as a step between the Junior High School Lego Team and the High School Robotics Team. As we have new students arrive from Lego's, or other areas we use the VEX robot, so they can get used to High School robotics. The full size robots can be intimidating to younger students, but with the ease of assembly of the FTC Kit, they can build a robot in a few hours and test it. It has many of the same sensors as the big robot and also uses the same type of programming.

In 2007, Team 1322 (Our FIRST Robotics Team) helped sponsor a VEX competition at Southwestern High School in Flint, Michigan. This was also the first year of our Vex team and they called themselves, The Vextreme. They finished second at this competition and won the Best Design Award. In this game they have a 15 second autonomous mode in which their robot was able to place two balls in a goal that was 12-inches tall. They were able to do this in almost every match. During the match play they were able to pick up three balls at a time and place them in their goals. There was also a 36-inch ball that they had to push on to their side. They were able to do this very well, their robot used four large tractor type wheels with four drive motors to do their pushing. Along with our very talented drivers we came "vextremely" close to winning first place. Although this was not a FIRST sponsored event, the winner qualified to go to Atlanta, GA for the finals. Since we won the award and finished in second we were asked to go to Atlanta also. Unfortunately, we did not have the funds for the trip. It was a great experience for the team nonetheless.

Currently the robot system has changed for FTC and the events are not available in our area, so we do not compete in FTC any more. We still use the old VEX system to teach.

Pictures

Awards