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Courtesy of Spartan Robotics
The Mountain View High Spartan Robotics team placed first in its division and fourth overall at the FIRST Robotics Championships last month in Houston.

Spartan Robotics Team 971 from Mountain View High School capped off its season by placing first in the Galileo subdivision at the FIRST Robotics Championships in Houston April 18-20.

There are 3,800 FIRST Robotics teams around the world, and half of them feed into the 403 teams that competed in six subdivisions in Houston.

The Spartan Robotics team competed in 10 qualification matches and finished as the No. 1 seed in Galileo. As the first-ranked team, they picked alliance partners from Arizona, Florida and Turkey to compete in double-elimination matches. The Mountain View High team placed fourth overall among the top six alliances in the Einstein final competition.

According to Michael Schuh, lead mentor of Spartan Robotics, this was the best performance Team 971 has ever had as an alliance captain or first pick.

“It is a great accomplishment for 971 to perform so well,” he said.

The team also won the Excellence in Engineering Award for its innovative design that included a suction cup to pick up cargo, created after testing 27 prototypes. To secure a spot at the championships, Spartan Robotics won both the San Francisco and Utah Regional competitions in March.

Teamwork challenge

FIRST Robotics competitions combine sports excitement with the rigors of science and technology. Under strict rules, limited resources and time limits, teams are challenged to exercise teamwork to design, prototype, build and program robots to compete in a game that includes autonomous and driver-operated periods.

In the 2019 challenge, “Destination: Deep Space,” presented by The Boeing Company, two competing alliances collected samples on planet Primus. With only two-and-a-half minutes until liftoff, the three teams on each alliance had to secure the hatch panels, gather as much cargo (balls) as possible and prepare their spaceships for liftoff before the next sandstorm arrived, all the while fending off defense from the opposing alliance.

“FIRST teams get hands-on experience with modern engineering equipment and technologies, but they also take on public speaking, leadership, problem-solving and collaboration challenges that build core skills and confidence,” said Don Bossi, president of FIRST.

Spartan Robotics has been competing in FIRST Robotics since 2002. The 2019 team comprises 48 students and is supported by more than 25 mentors, many of whom are FIRST alumni. During the competition season, students meet up to 20 hours per week to design and build their robot.

Over the past five years, 100 percent of the team’s alumni graduated and pursued higher education; 100 percent of the past two graduating classes have majored in STEM fields; 39 percent of the team is female; and female members compose 46 percent of the leadership council and 50 percent of the technical crew. Team members speak nine languages.

In addition to building robots, Team 971 members volunteer to promote STEM throughout the year and participate in local community events such as the Mountain View Tech Showcase and Toys for Tots. Within the FIRST Robotics community, Spartan Robotics assisted more than 20 FIRST teams this year, including mentoring the first robotics team in Indonesia, sharing open source code and hosting the Spartan Series of workshops, taught by Team 971 students and mentors, reaching more than 200 people and 15,000 viewers with eight hours of learning material.

Sponsors of Team 971 include NASA, Google Inc., Auris Health Inc., Peloton Technology Co., Lockheed-Martin Corp., Apple Inc., Abbott Fund, Linley Group, Nvidia Corp., Intuitive Surgical Corp. and DSS Solidworks Corp.

For more information on Spartan Robotics, visit frc971.org.

For more information on FIRST, visit firstinspires.org.





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