RED RIVER PRECISION JOINS UP WITH WESTWOOD HIGH SCHOOL’S ROBOTICS TEAM

Created at : Apr 21, 2016

If you don’t have school aged kids you might not know about a new trend sweeping the nation. It isn’t dance, music, or clothing—It’s robotics. Yep, all across the country, teams of elementary, middle, and high school kids are coming together to engineer and build robots to compete against other teams. As the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) says it’s ‘the ultimate sport for the mind.’

We were extremely excited to be asked to help a local team build their robot to compete in FRC. We provided some water jet work they needed on 1 x 2 aluminum tubing. Their robot #2583 is impressive—big, orange and blue, with hooks that can grab onto things.

FRC had over 3,000 teams participating nationwide and 66 teams that participated in the Alamo region. The Westwood team and Robot 2583 did great! They advanced to the semi-finals for the first time and set a record for the team. Another first for the team was winning the entrepreneurship award where they had to ‘sell’ their robot to a panel of judges. You can watch Robot 2583 in action here and see photos from the competition. (Scroll to the bottom of the first page to see ‘our’ bot.)

A competition like this is exciting in so many ways. It builds teamwork and develops skills that will carry these students into careers like engineering or manufacturing. We are thrilled to be supporting the next generation of engineers and the school programs that are developing talent in the technology fields. Red River is proud of the job they did and looks forward to continuing to offer support and guidance as students continue to compete and explore engineering.