Aquidneck Island Robotics Team Earns Spot at World Championship

Aquidneck Island's Team 78, AIR Strike has secured its spot to compete at the FIRST World Championship in St. Louis, MO on April 28-30, having  won the Boston Regional Robotics Competition last weekend in Boston, Mass. 

The team will join the more than 350 teams and 20,000 students, mentors, spectators, and volunteers expected to attend the international event later this month, according to Rick Blight, Club Leader of the Aquidneck Island Robotics 4‐H Club that fielded the winning team.

AIR Strike placed first out of 53 teams last weekend at the Boston Regional Robotics Competition, while student team member Michael Violet won the prestigious Dean’s List Award, Blight said in an announcement this week. 

The three-day robotics competition featured teams made up of high school students partnered with science and technology professionals. Teams were given a new game to play in early January and only six weeks to build a 5-foot and 150-pound robot to complete the game objectives, Blight said. The AIR Strike team is comprised of 30 high school students from twelve high schools across Rhode Island.

The robot had to play the 2011 FRC game, "Logo Motion" in which two competing alliances squared off on a flat 27-foot by 54-foot field, Blight explained.  Each alliance consisted of three robots. They had to hang as many inflated plastic shapes (triangles, circles, and squares) on their grids as they could during each match that lasted a little more than two minutes. The higher the teams hung their game pieces on their scoring grid, the more points their alliance won. The match ended with robots deploying minibots, small electro-mechanical assemblies that are independent of the host robot, onto vertical poles. The minibots raced to the top of the pole to trigger a sensor and earn additional bonus points, Blight said.

In an effort to recognize the leadership and dedication of FIRST’s most outstanding FIRST Robotics Competition students, the FIRST founder Dean Kamen sponsors an award for selected top students, known as the FIRST Dean’s List.

AIR Strike student Michael Violet was one of the two students selected for this prestigious award at the event, Blight also announced.

Organizers for AIR Strike 78 credited much of the group's success this year to sponsors that include the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, the National Defense Education Program, Raytheon, BAE Systems, and JC Penney, which all donated funds, tools, and technology professionals to mentor the Aquidneck Island students.