About Us
- Southwest Robotics Team
- FRC Team #2129
- FRC Team Name: Ultraviolet
- Rookie Year: 2006-2007
- Location: Minneapolis, MN, USA
- Members: 28
- Sponsors: Cargill, Nonin Medical, Inc., Discount Steel, The Bakken, and NASA.
- Special thanks to ipHouse for providing our server with power and an Internet connection.
Our team gives students the chance to acquire and apply skills in public relations, media, finances, marketing, animation, and, most importantly, engineering in a stimulating environment that encourages creativity and ingenuity. By participating in the FIRST competition, we work in an environment similar to that of a real workplace, meeting the expectations by the required deadlines.
History
We were founded in Fall 2006 with help from FRC Team #1816, The Green Machine. Our captain was a senior named Hans Pflaumer.
Our largest contributor was Nonin Medical Inc. Other sponsors included NASA, Wells Fargo, Village Bank, Paradise Pizza, and Do it Best. We raised $18,400 our rookie year.
On Friday, January 5th, 2007, we attended pre-Kick-off workshops. There were several presentations given by experts and veteran teams, aimed at rookie teams like ourselves. These workshops covered several general aspects of FRC, such as programming, strategy, and electrical systems. These presentations were very informative and helpful for our team.
Saturday, January 6th was the Kick-off event itself. It had several parts comprising it; the beginning was for social interaction, and welcoming and encouraging speeches from people both in Minneapolis and in New Hampshire. The speeches from New Hampshire were included in the simulcast of the Kick-off. Some of the speech-makers were Dean Kamen (the founder of FIRST), the president of FIRST, the governors of New Hampshire and of Hawaii, and an Ohio congressman. Following all of these speeches finally came the revealing of the challenge for 2007. The challenge this year is called "Rack 'n Roll", and consists of inner tubes and a 10-foot-tall, octagonal apparatus with poles to hang the inner tubes on. At any one time, there will be six robots on the field, making up two alliances of three robots each. The way in which each alliance scores points is by hanging the inner tubes on the poles. However, that is not the only challenge; it will be necessary for some robots to defend the robots on their alliance. Also, there is one bonus challenge: to try to lift robots off of the ground. There are two heights that earn points; at 4 inches, 15 points are awarded; at 12 inches above the ground, 30 points are awarded. Therefore, there will be three "classes" of robots: robots that hang the inner tubes and score points for the alliance, robots that defend the alliance's robots, and robots that attempt to lift other robots.
January 8th and 9th, we met for brainstorming sessions regarding strategy of our approach and the design of the drive system and any appendages. We have decided that our robot will be an offensive robot, so it will hang the inner tubes on the poles. We are working on the specific design of the chassis and of the arm to carry and hang the inner tubes. We have wonderful mentors who have been donating their evenings to helping us to design the robot.
We decided on a design that involved a simple but effective drive system, with two powered wheels in back and two casters in front. Our arm was mounted to an extension lift that could reach up 10 feet, gaining the ability to score on all three rows of the rack.
On March 7th, we traveled from Minneapolis to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to compete in the Wisconsin Regional FIRST Robotics Competition. There were 52 teams in attendance for the three day event. After an exciting and victorious high-scoring first match, we lost our 2nd and 3rd matches because our lift kept breaking down. We came back to win our 4th and 7th matches. At the end of the Qualification Matches, we had won three games and lost five. Modifications to the lift cable were needed after our Friday afternoon matches to make it more reliable - the team was able to find a cable wire strong and thin enough to fit and created a better tensioning system so we were better able to compete in Saturday's matches.
We were thrilled to have our mentoring team, "The Green Machine", Team 1816 of Edina High School, request our assistance in the quarterfinals. We progressed into the semi-finals in alliance with Team 1816 of Edina and Team 1732 of Milwaukee. During the semi-finals the Green Machine, the star defensive player on our alliance, had some transmission failure and we lost, in doing so losing our chance to win the finals and advance to the World Championship Competition.
As a team we were awarded a Best Alliance Partner plaque from Team 1675 of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. One of the competition volunteers also complimented our team's drivers on being "the nicest young men she had worked with in 7 years" of volunteering for this competition.
We are thankful to have had the opportunity to participate in the 2007 FIRST Wisconsin Regional Robotics Competition and look forward to an even better year next year.
This year, our captain is a sophomore named Mark Ulrich. We have 24 people signed up to participate in this year's events.
