Aquidneck Island Robotics Club Named Semifinalist at World Championship

A robotics club with members from Aquidneck Island finished as runners-up in a worldwide championship held this past weekend in St. Louis, MO.

The First Robotics Competition (FRC) team 78, AIR Strike, finished as semifinalists amongst 352 teams at the FRC World Championship.

More than 20,000 students, mentors, spectators and volunteers attended the three-day robotics competition, featuring teams made up of high school students partnered with science and technology professionals. 

Teams are given a new game to play in early January and only six weeks to build a 5-foot-tall, 150 pound robot to complete the game objectives. AIR Strike is comprised of 30 high school students from 12 high schools across Rhode Island, including students from Aquidneck Island. 

The robot must play the 2011 FRC game, LOGO MOTION.  The game is played by two competing alliances on a flat 27’ x 54’ foot field. 

Each alliance consists of three robots. They compete to hang as many inflated plastic shapes (triangles, circles, and squares) on their grids as they can during a 2 minute and 15 second match. 

The higher the teams hang their game pieces on their scoring grid, the more points their alliance receives. The match ends with robots deploying minibots, small electro-mechanical assemblies that are independent of the host robot, onto vertical poles. The minibots race to the top of the pole to trigger a sensor and earn additional bonus points.

After 10 qualification matches, the team seeded fourth place and played in the elimination rounds with team 1538, The Holy Cows from San Diego, CA and team 494, The Martians from Goodrich, MI. The alliance worked well together throughout the quarterfinals, but lost to the first seeded alliance in a three-match battle to make it to the division finals.

In an effort to recognize the leadership and dedication of 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 10 student finalists selected for this prestigious award at the World Championship. Michael received many prizes for being selected, including letters of recommendation from FIRST Robotics founder Dean Kamen, an all expenses paid Leadership in Engineering Workshop in Manchester, NH, and a $1,000 grant for Aquidneck Island Robotics 4-H Club.

AIR Strike 78 sponsors include the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Division Newport, the National Defense Education Program (NDEP), Raytheon, BAE Systems and JCPenney.