Students Perform Well at FIRST Robotics Competition

The FIRST Robotics Competition Granite State District Event awarded several teams with honors for design excellence, competitive play, sportsmanship, and high impact partnerships between schools, businesses and communities, during the event held in Nashua, NH, last weekend.

FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology and the event highlighted the work of students – along with mentors – to design and build robots over a month and a half that would solve specific problems, with a set of guidelines to meet as well. The organization was founded by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway, in 1989.

The following teams won Granite State District Awards:

• District Chairman’s Award*: Team 467 Shrewsbury Colonials, Shrewsbury, MA
• Rookie All-Star Award: Team 5400 WARP, Worcester, MA
• Engineering Inspiration Award: Team 811 The Cardinals, Nashua, NH
• District Winners: Team 1307 Robosaints, Dover, NH
• District Winners: Team 95 Grasshoppers, Lebanon, NH
• District Winners: Team 1519 Mechanical Mayhem, Milford, NH
• District Finalist: Team 190 Gompi and the H.E.R.D., Worcester, MA
• District Finalist: Team 811 BG Cardinals, Nashua, NH
• District Finalist: Team 138 Entropy, Amherst, NH
• Engineering Excellence Award: Team 95 The Grasshoppers, Lebanon, NH
• Innovation in Control Award: Team 1519 Mechanical Mayhem, Milford, NH
• Rookie Inspiration Award: Team 5491 Cognitive Hazard, Winchendon, MA
• Industrial Design Award: Team 885 The Green Team, Randolph Center, VT
• Quality Award: Team 2876 Devilbotz, Burlington, MA
• Highest Rookie Seed Award: Team 5400 WARP, Worcester, MA
• Creativity Award: Team 246 Overclocked Boston, MA
• Gracious Professionalism Award: Team 3958 Schrodinger’s Cat, Boston, MA
• Entrepreneurship Award: Team 238 Cruisin’ Crusaders, Manchester, NH
• Imagery Award: Team 88 TJ2, Bridgewater, MA
• Team Spirit Award: Team 1922 Oz-Ram, Contoocook/Weare, NH
• Judges Award: Team 157 Aztechs, Marlborough, MA
• Industrial Safety Award: Team 2342 Phoenix, Nashua, NH

Officials noted that the chairman’s award was “the most prestigious award of the event and recognizes the team that embodies the goals and purpose of FIRST and best represents a model for other teams to emulate and qualifies the recipient to participate in the NE FIRST New England Championship to be held in Worcester, MA.”

For more photos, visit the organization’s Flickr site.