I am happy to report that our FIRST Robotics Team #1720 (a.k.a. PhyXTGears) had a great showing at the FIRST Robotics Boilermaker Regional Competition on the Purdue campus in West Lafayette this last weekend.  The team won the "Highest Rookie Seed Award" and placed 11^th overall at the end of the qualifying match competitions.  This was a large accomplishment for what turned out to be the 2^nd smallest team at the competition.  We have also been presented with the opportunity to attend the national competition in Atlanta, GA. next month.  Such an opportunity was beyond our wildest expectations, but unfortunately may be beyond our budget unless we can secure additional funding.

For those of you who don't know about the robotics team, these are the high school students and adult mentors from local industry that have been "camping out" in the north-east corner of AT144 for the last two months building a robot.  You may also have seen them around the department last semester in the evenings and on weekends during our training & planning sessions.

I would like to thank the faculty and staff in the department that provided support of the FIRST Robotics Team #1720 with their time, expertise and patience.  The outstanding success of the team came in large part from the resources provide by the Department of Technology in terms of people and facilities.  An extra thank you to Tom Jarvis and LeeAnn and to of all the faculty, GA's and student workers in AT144 – who graciously endured the FIRST Robotics team's invasion of AT144!

Respectfully submitted,
Rick Johnson
Assistant Professor
Department of Technology

WWW links for additional information:
     Muncie Delaware Team #1720: http://muncierobotics.org/

     Boilermaker Regional: http://first.purdue.org/boilermakerregional/

     FIRST Robotics (national): http://www.usfirst.org/index.html