April 5, 2013

Governor Simcoe Robotics Bound for St. Louis

Niagara’s public high schools will be well represented at the FIRST world championship event in St. Louis later this month. Team 1114 from Governor Simcoe Secondary School in St. Catharines qualified for the April 27 competition by winning events in Toronto and Waterloo. Governor Simcoe’s Simbotics team will be joined by the Spartonics from Westlane Secondary in Niagara Falls.

In addition to Governor Simcoe’s win in Toronto, the team also took home the Industrial Design Award for their robot, who is affectionately named B.A. Baracus after the iconic character played by Mr. T in the 1980’s television series “The A Team”.

This year’s competition theme is “Ultimate Ascent”. This game is played by two competing alliances on a flat field. Each alliance has three robots and they compete to place as many discs into their goals as they can in two minutes and fifteen seconds. Points increase depending on the height of each goal.

Once the game was announced, teams had six weeks to plan, design, develop and test their robots.

This year’s world championship will feature over 400 teams and will be seen by over 35,000 spectators.

You can follow the team’s progress on Twitter @frc1114.