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World Championship in St. Louis, MO
Saturday April 28, 2012

After finishing in first place at their LA and California Central Valley regional competitions, Dos Pueblos High School's FIRST Robotics team, Team 1717, and its robot the Lindsay Rose are headed to the World Championship, held in St. Louis from April 25-28.

This year marks the sixth time out of the Engineering Academy's seven years of participation in FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) that Team 1717 has advanced to the championship round. Because the team is composed exclusively of seniors, however, this is a totally new experience for the 32 students who will be in St. Louis operating the robot, performing maintenance, scouting potential alliance members, and cheering in the stands of the Edward Jones Dome.

The D'Penguineers, finishing their regionals with a robot number one in Offensive Power Rating out of over 2,300 teams (and heading to St. Louis with an adjusted ranking of second in the world), have high expectations and even higher spirits in light of the upcoming championship. Team member Danielle Tisdale comments "It's like the scenes leading up to a movie climax. It's ridiculously exciting!" Fellow D'Penguineer Justin Morris adds "I am majorly stoked. It's awesome to be part of a team that's been so successful and is heading toward even greater successes in the future."

The team's challenge: build a robot to play Rebound Rumble, a basketball-themed game in which two alliances of three robots each compete to score foam basketballs into four basketball hoops. During the first fifteen seconds of the match, robots can perform only pre- programmed actions, but for the next two minutes, "drivers" operate the robot using joystick controls to navigate the field and make baskets. Alliances have the opportunity to score additional points at the end of each match by balancing their robots on tilting platforms, or "bridges," in the middle of of the court. For the maximum number of points, all three robots on an alliance need to squeeze onto one bridge.

Teams in the competition have only six weeks to design, build, and test before they must stop work on the robot. This "build season" was a race against the clock -- even with four days left to go until their midnight deadline, the D'Penguineers were still drawing up the frame design. However, the team was able to build an identical practice robot alongside their competition entry with which they could spend an extra three weeks improving mechanisms and practicing maneuvering on a full-size court.

Although the team started off at the Long Beach competition with a less than complete robot, they pulled together to create a machine to be feared. The D'Penguineers worked through the first day at the arena assembling components they had designed post-build season, mounting the shooter, and doing final systems checks all in a frenzy to prepare for the following day's matches. What was once a bag of parts soon became a crowd favorite: the Lindsay Rose built a reputation of excellence and earned the respect of even the most prestigious teams with its omnidirectional drive train and over 90% shooting accuracy. The team went home with a first place trophy, as did their two alliance partners.

Team 1717 grew even stronger in April's Central Valley Regional as the drivers put in hundreds of additional hours of practice and the programmers refined their code for the turret to maximize speed and accuracy. In addition to being the first seed and winning the regional, 1717 was awarded the "Innovation in Control" Award for its versatile swerve drive.

The D'Penguineers, with the experience of two regional wins under their belt, are now ready to conquer the World Championship. Even if the Lindsay Rose doesn't make it to the final round, it is safe to say that it has had a hugely successful run. DPEA Director Amir Abo-Shaeer believes that this year could be 1717's big win. "We have a real shot at winning this," Abo-Shaeer says with ardent conviction.

Be sure to watch Team 1717 face off in the FIRST Championship! Live streaming by NASA is available from April 25-28 at http://robotics.arc.nasa.gov/events/2012_frcwebcasts.php#webcasts

About the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy: Dos Pueblos High School (DPHS), in collaboration with the Santa Barbara County Education Office Regional Occupation Program (ROP), determined that our community would benefit from the presence of an engineering program designed for students at the secondary level. The DPEA offered its initial course during the 2002-2003 academic school year with the introduction of Engineering 1 and Computer Science 1. The capstone senior-level ROP Robotics course, which is supported by the Santa Barbara County Education Office, was added in 2005. The Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy has a broad base of community support, including UCSB, Santa Barbara City College, and local industry partners. The DPEA is a public school program, operating on campus at Dos Pueblos High School, which is located at 7266 Alameda Avenue in Goleta, California. For more information on the Engineering Academy, please see http://www.dpengineering.org

About the DPEA Foundation: Engineering Academy parents established the DPEA Foundation in the fall of 2007 in order to run the Capital Campaign to raise $3,000,000 for a new facility, which was reached in October of 2011. The DPEA Foundation mission is to enhance the quality of the DPEA learning experience and to facilitate the growth of the Academy by raising the necessary funds and by creating and managing systems and structures to support the program. For more information on the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy Foundation, please see www.dpeaf.org

About FIRST Robotics: The FIRST Robotics Competition is an exciting, multinational competition that teams professionals and young people together to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way. The program is a life-changing, career-molding experience and a lot of fun. Each year the competition reaches more than 60,000 students on over 26,000 teams in competitions held across the USA and in other parts of the world. The teams come from Brazil, Canada, Chile, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, the U.K., and every state in the U.S. The competitions are high-tech spectator sporting events: the result of lots of focused brainstorming, real-world teamwork, dedicated mentoring, project timelines, and deadlines. For more information on FIRST Robotics, please see http://usfirst.org/.

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