Farmington's FIRST robotics team does well at regional competition

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Farmington High School FIRST robotics team finished the best it ever had in Regions this year.

Most people don’t even know that Farmington High School has a robotics team, which is coached by FHS teachers David Stauffer and Doug Mead.

The FIRST Robotics Competition is an international high school robotics competition organized by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). Each year, teams of high school students compete to build robots that can complete a task, which changes every year. Teams are given a standard set of parts and the game details at the beginning of January and are given six weeks to construct a competitive robot, that can operate autonomously as well as when guided by wireless controls, to accomplish the game's tasks. This year’s task was to shoot basketballs into one of 4 baskets, and was called Rebound Rumble.

Teams are also sponsored by outside organizations, Farmington’s sponsors included JC Penny’s, Medtronic’s, and General Dynamics. General Dynamics also had a mentor, David Baker, come and help the team out.

Minnesota has two regions: Minnesota 10000 Lakes Regional - Minneapolis; and Minnesota North Star Regional - Minneapolis.

The Farmington High School team finished the Minnesota 10,000 Lakes regional championship qualifying rounds ranked 14 out of 65 teams.

The regionals took place at Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota on March 29-31.

Team members Jack Lofgren and Corey Williams helped construct, and program the robot.?They were not in the regional competition.

Team members Gus Aldana, Tyler Bade, and Weston Loeschke attended one day of the competition. Jimmy Gerster, Tyler Knutson, Chandler Ulrich, and Kyle Wenck attented the entire event.

One more interesting fact told by Senator Al Franken was, there are more High School FIRST Robotic teams, than high school hockey teams.

Tags: high school, education, farmington, community