Team 1504 is entering the 2010 FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) season in its 6th 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 High School, and Williamston High School; and, mentors from Michigan State University, Kettering University, Lansing Community College, Lawrence Tech, Rockwell Automation, and Liquid Web. 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 movie, designing a team website, designing the robot with professional CAD software, engineering and building the robot, wiring the electronics and robot, programming the robot, writing award submissions, team publicity, inspiring our community with science and technology, 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 FIRST. 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. The real fun of FRC starts at the official Kick-Off in January. As around 60 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. This year we are scheduled to participate in the Kettering University and Lansing competitions. Depending on how our team does in these competitions we can be invited to the State Championship at Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Mi, 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 two local elementary-schools, working with elementary students to teach them how LEGO Mindstorms works, and inspiring them to pursue interests in science and technology. Our most recent projects involved the collection of non-perishable food, to donate to a local food-bank, and presentation of local-businesses through selling coupon-books across our 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 FIRST Robotics Competition 2010 Game Animation

Source: 2010 FIRST Robotics Competition Page
© FIRST Robotics Competition

The Breakaway Game Manual

The site was made by Team 1504's student-led web-design team using Adobe’s Creative Suite 4 and a variety of coding languages; for example, PHP, CSS , HTML 5, Spry, and JQuery. The goal of the website is to enable both Team 1504 members and the community at large to find information pertaining to Team 1504 and FIRST in a professional, innovative, and user-friendly experience. If there is something about the website that you feel does not satisfy this goal to the best degree, feel free to e-mail the webmaster.