About FIRST
FIRST Vision"To create a world where science and technology are celebrated... where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes"
-Dean Kamen, Founder
FIRST Mision
FIRST designs accessible, innovative programs that build not only science and technology skills and interests, but also self-confidence, leadership, and life skills.
Dean Kamen is an inventor, entrepreneur, and tireless advocate for science and technology. His passion and determination to help young people discover the excitement and rewards of science and technology are the cornerstones of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology).
FIRST was founded in 1989 to inspire young people's interest and participation in science and technology. Based in Manchester, NH, the 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit public charity designs accessible, innovative programs that motivate young people to pursue education and career opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math, while building self-confidence, knowledge, and life skills.
About AIM Robotics, Team 1123
Team History
Team 1123, AIM Robotics, was founded in the 2003 by a group of home school families who desired to give their students an educational experience of a life time. We make it a point to be an open team. Unlike some teams which only go to set events every year, we make ourselves open to many possibilities. In our last four years of attending regionals, we have gone twice to the VCU/NASA Richmond regional and twice to the Annapolis regional. We also go off season competitions, and we have attended many different off season events including the Maryland state fair, the York, Pennsylvania Sumer Frenzy (hosted by team 225), and the very first Robot Rumble at the Virginia State Fair in 2006.
Founding Sources
Going with our community based roots, this year we were sponsored by the local businesses. The largest single donations we got had a value of $500 and they were both from community businesses: Shenandoah’ Pride Port Royal Location and IP Research. We also asked individuals for contributions, which included our relatives, friends, and other amazing people we meet while going door to door in our neighborhoods. This strategy worked fine this year due to the time limits we had this year, but in the future we hope to secure corporate donations.
Most Significant Challenge Overcome
Unlike last year, the most significant challenge we had to overcome this year was survival. Last year the most significant challenge we had to overcome was funding, and finding sponsors is still one of the most challenging aspects of the FIRST Robotics competition. After the 2006 season, the team fell apart for various reasons and we only had two returning team members and no mentors, and we lost our sponsor who had graciously let us meet and build at his warehouse. Both the team members were homeschoolers, so they didn’t have any support from an established school. Instead they turned to the homeschool community for help. They wrote articles and posted on the homeschool e-newspapers/bulletins and during the summer, an interested family contacted us, and told us their son was interested in participating in our robotics team. We paid them a house visit, and they became an active family on the team. During the summer, we generally only have two goals: 1. Fix up the robot for off season competitions so that we can provide a taste of FIRST to new team members, and 2. Fundraise. This summer, though, our goal was to recruit more team members (we only had 3 at this point in time). We continued posting on home schooling bulletin boards, and even attempted to find out how we could spread the message to public school students (since we are a community based team), but weren’t able to do so because school was out during the summer making students incredibly difficult to reach. We finally found out about a homeschool conference at the Dulles Expo Center in Northern Virginia. We contacted them, and persuaded them to give us a booth in order to attract team members only (We couldn’t ask for donations because we were getting the booth for free). We got a booth, and we also partnered with another homeschool group, the Young People’s Theater, and shared our booth with them. We got 5-6 more interested team members from the 2 day conference. We continued posting on bulletin boards, and still are. One of the families we contacted and were interested in joining our team and graciously offered their basement to us for building our robot during the 2007 build season. For mentors, a couple of the parents are engineers, and we contacted our Senior FIRST mentor and she provided us with a software/electrical mentor and one of the team members asked a former member of Chantilly Robotics (612) to mentor us. We also got all the parents involved in the team, so by the time build season came around, we had 14 team members (of which 2 attended public school), 3 official mentors, and a team of parents behind us all the way, and almost everyone had one off season competition under their belt.
Team goals
This year, the student members of AIM robotics are dedicated to learning. This means that this year team members are given a chance to work on anything they feel interested in, not just what they are good at. We also are trying to improve on the skills we posses now. We also want build a successful robot that will perform successfully during the regional. The veteran members also want the rookies to have the time of their life during their very first FIRST Robotics competition.
Team strengths
One of team 1123’s strength is their determination and perseverance. As mentioned in the “most significant challenge overcome” section, we almost started from scratch. The reason we survived was the determination and perseverance of the two veteran members, and then the other team members who joined us for the ride.
Robot game and strategy
Our strategy for this year is being more offensive than last year. Last year, we played a “Dump & Defense ” strategy (dump refers to the corner goal’s of last year’s game). This year, we want to be more offensive. This is why we built an arm to score on the rack, and a ramp to help us score bonus points.