Vermont’s Green Team 885 Ready
For Regional FIRST Competition
By Martha Slater

Last Friday evening, several rooms in the annex at VTC’s Morrill Hall in Randolph Center were a hive of activity as 20 middle and high school students from 13 different central Vermont communities were hard at work.

Led by advisors John Connor and Jim Wick, the 18 boys and two girls of the Green Team 885 have spent the past six weeks putting in long hours working together to meet a challenge issued by the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition.

Founded about 15 years ago in Manchester, N.H., the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is a unique varsity sport of the mind designed to help high-school-aged young people discover how interesting and rewarding the life of engineers and researchers can be. The competition challenges teams of young people and their mentors to solve a common problem in a six-week timeframe using a standard kit of parts provided by FIRST and a common set of rules.

The teams enter their robots, which weigh up to 120 lbs. (excluding battery and bumpers) in a series of competitions designed by Dean Kamen, Dr. Woodie Flowers, and a committee of engineers and other professionals. Awards are given for excellence in design, demonstrated team spirit, gracious professionalism and maturity, and ability to overcome obstacles.

What began in 1992 with 28 teams in a New Hampshire high-school gym, now involves over 100,000 kids, and the FIRST Championship is now held at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

Vermont’s Only Team

The Green Team 885 is Vermont’s only FIRST team and was the subject of a recent feature segment on WCAX-TV. The team, which has been together for six years, was started by Mary Anderson and her son, Ben.

"Ben and I were the first two members to stay on for many years," explained Nate Soares, a senior at RUHS, who joined the team in its second year. Now the senior member of the team, Soares is obviously a whiz at multi-tasking, since he’s also currently the stage manager for the RUHS production of "Becket." 

Connor, a general contractor from Berlin, acts as the team’s administrative manger, and got involved with the FIRST program two years ago when his son, Matthew, now a 15-year-old freshman at U-32, joined the team. Wick, an engineer who is also a coach at the Sharon Academy, is the team’s engineering manager.

"My job is really systems integration," he notes. "I make sure all three squads on the team are working in coordination with each other." Wick also runs the steering committee meetings each Saturday, where the group does troubleshooting.

The team members got their challenge January 6. A game called "Rack ’n Roll," it asked them to invent a robotic device that can pick up as many inflatable inner tubes as possible, carry them across a 52 ft. long playing field, and place them on an octagonal structure in the center within a two minute and 15 second time period.

"Imagine putting doughnuts on spiders," Soares suggested, as a way to illustrate the task. At the competition, three teams work together in an alliance (labeled either red or blue) to play matches against another alliance.

Community Help

The Green Team 885 uses shop, classroom and storage space in Morrill Hall donated by Vermont Technical College.

"We’re very grateful for that," Connor said. "Without VTC, this team wouldn’t be able to exist."

The team has also received donations of materials from IGUS, DMS, GW Plastics, and EDM Clockwise of Brookfield, and JD Properties has donated storage space. The names of all donors are printed on the team’s T-shirts and can also be found on their web site www.thegreenteam885.org. The web site, which features a photograph of the team members wearing those bright green t-shirts, was designed and is administered by team member Forrest Immel of Castleton.

Although a donation of CAD (Computer Assisted Design) software, enabled the team to do the whole design in 3-D, most of the robot is entirely hand-built.

"Most teams don’t let students do as much machining of parts as ours does," explained Chip Hafner, a freshman at RUHS who is in his third year on the team.

During the six weeks since they got their challenge, the team has worked together every Thursday and Friday evening, all day Saturday, and on Sunday afternoon. This past week, however, they met every day, because the deadline to ship their robot to Manchester, N.H. was Tuesday, Feb. 20. FedEx donates the cost of shipping.

The Green Team 885 will compete at the regional FIRST competition at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester March 1-3. If they do well there, they could go on to compete at the FIRST Nationals April 14-16 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Ga. The top three teams and a fourth "honored" team from each regional event will earn the right to compete there. The 2007 FIRST Robotics Competition includes over 32,500 high-school students on 1,307 teams from seven countries: Brazil, Canada, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.

"Since teams from all seven countries will be competing, it’s actually the world championship," Hafner pointed out.

"We’re the only independent state team in the competition," Soares said. "Most teams are run out of a high school. My goal is to get the FIRST challenge team run out of RUHS."

Including Connor and Wick, 10 or 12 adults work with the local team, helping and advising in various ways.

"The true gift of our team is the mentors like Jim Wick, Job Boette, and Bruce Woodward," Connor concluded. "The three of them give their time and talent freely and the kids learn the correct way to do things. A lot of the parents also help out. It’s a true team effort."

"The strength of our Vermont regional team is that we have team members from all over central Vermont who would normally not ever meet each other, working and learning together. It’s really a wonderful opportunity for everyone."

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