Houston, Here We Come!

After this past weekend’s robotics regional competition at Lehigh University, Team 1218 is on its way to FIRST’s WORLD tournament! Twenty-seven students, their mentors, and “Stinger” (our award-winning robot) will head to Houston, TX, next week. 

The team learned that they were eligible to advance to “Worlds” at the end of the Lehigh event. For 40 nerve-wracking minutes, while calculations were finalized, teams gathered and listened intently as team names were read off to indicate which teams were eligible to move onto the season’s culminating competition. See the moment of the BIG reveal above. “Making it to the World Championship is huge,” says team advisor and chair of the Engineering and Robotics Department Peter Randall. “There are 4,728 teams worldwide and only the top 10 percent are able to move on to this final stage.”

Team 1218 also earned the Industrial Design Award at Lehigh. Sponsored by General Motors, this award “celebrates the team that demonstrates industrial design principles, striking a balance between form, function, and aesthetics.” Notably, the entire robot design, or the detailed process used to develop the design, is worthy of this recognition, and not just a single component and “Stinger” distinguishes itself from others by its aesthetic and functional design. Well done, all.

A Livestream link is here. Let’s go, Team 1218!