Team 1504 is entering the 2008 FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) season in its 5th year in the program. Started in 2005, the Desperate Penguins are a successful and thriving team who are now working on the many aspects that go into the build season. Composed of students from Okemos High School, Lansing Christian, and mentors from Michigan State University, Kettering, Lansing Community College, TechSmith, Rockwell Automation, Bullseye Telecom, and the State of Michigan, the team offers a diverse range of skills and experiences for students to draw from. Some of the many experiences that the team offers are working with professional animation software to develop a short 3D movie, designing a team website, designing the robot with professional CAD software, engineering and building the robot, wiring the remote and robot, programming the robot, writing award submissions, team publicity, and having fun! Anyone is welcome to join the team, no experience is necessary, just an open mind and desire to learn new things.

The team meets at Okemos High School starting in September to begin the process of preparing for the pre-build season. An informational meeting is held in October for all of the students and parents who are interested in learning more about the program. The team then progresses into the pre-build season with team-building activities, mock kick-offs, and organizing into the units that people are interested in. At the official Kick-Off in January, the real fun of FRC starts. As around 50 other teams meet at Novi High School, the year’s competition is revealed in much excitement, and the designing of the robot starts. For the next six weeks, the team works hard on finishing their awards, website, animation, and robot, for the final due date. Once all of these are done we get to see how we did by competing against other teams at the Kettering University and Lansing Center competitions. Depending on how are team does in these competitions we can be invited to the State Championship in Ypsilanti or even the World Championship in Atlanta. The whole season is pretty busy, but the experience is one of a kind.

FIRST ideals are a constant focus of the team, and we always strive to incorporate the community and the inspiration of students in our meetings and programs. Recently the team sponsored a LEGO League workshop at Cornell Elementary, working with elementary students to teach them how LEGO Mindstorm works, and inspiring them to pursue interests in science and technology. As a recent project, everyone on the team collected items to give to a local homeless shelter to become more involved in the community.

"To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes."
Dean Kamen, FIRST Founder

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) was created by Dean Kamen in 1989 as a small group in New Hampshire to inspire young people’s interest in science and technology. Today, FIRST has spread its message far and wide with teams in many states and internationally in 33 countries. The FIRST program has many aspects for all ages of students. One for all ages is FIRST place, a program in New Hampshire that offers classes for new learning opportunities. Junior FIRST LEGO League (JFLL) is a LEGO program whose goal is to plant the first seeds of curiosity in children 6 to 9 years old. FIRST LEGO League (FLL) allows students from 9 to 14 years old to explore their interests in engineering and in science and build their confidence in those areas. At the high school level, FIRST offers two programs, the first being FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) which is designed to be an accessible mid-level robotics program, coming with an affordable kit of parts. The high school program that we at Team 1504 compete in is the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). FRC was created to help high schools students learn how interesting the jobs of an engineer and scientists can be. The teams involved are challenged to build a robot from a common kit of parts in six weeks. Instead of traditionally focusing on only winning in the competition, FRC tries to encourage scoring points as a secondary goal, with the main being learning and growing intellectually while building lasting relationships and incorporating the idea of gracious professionalism into all of their work.

Teams in FRC consist of experienced and professional mentors aiding students in designing and creating a robot for the competition regionals. The competition for each year is internationally unveiled on Kick-Off day where Dean Kamen and Woodie Flowers, the man behind the idea of gracious professionalism, tell the world of FRC participants what their lives will consist of for the next six weeks. Every year holds a new and unique competition that challenges teams to develop a robot that will creatively solve the obstacles that the challenge poses.

The site was made solely by the students on Team 1504 using Adobe’s Creative Suite 4. The goal of the website is to be able to easily navigationBarigate and find information pertaining to Team 1504 and FIRST. If there is something about the website that you feel does not satisfy these goals to the best degree, or if there is a problem, feel free to e-mail the webmaster.