After 9 years of Week One competitions, Round Table Robotics made the decision to NOT travel to Minnesota for an out-of-state event this season. This was a tough choice to make, but it has given us more time to prepare for our back-to-back week five and week six events at Mukwonago High School and State Fair Park. Because our two qualifying events are in-state and do not require overnight travel, we took the funds we would have used for a coach bus and made a capital investment for the team. We now have our own Bench Mill. Along with last year’s Flat Bed CNC machine, we have dramatically increased our fabrication capacity. Please come out and cheer for us at the Phantom Lakes Regional March 28 and 29th, in Mukwonago, and the Wisconsin Regional presented by GE HealthCare at the State Fair Expo Hall on April 5th and 6th, 2025.
Our team’s GEM (Gender Equality in Manufacturing) group put together a fundraiser premiere screening of the movie Rule Breakers last Thursday night. This inspiring story about an all-girls FIRST® robotics team from Afghanistan sheds light on the hurdles that women around the world face every day. We highly recommend this movie for anyone interested in STEM. We had over 100 people attend this event. The money we earned from it will fund some all-girls summer programs later this year.
Gracious Professionalism® has an important role in the ethos of FIRST®. Our team lives this by supporting other teams in any way we can. Because our school district has provided space big enough for a full-sized practice field, we invite other teams to come out and practice with us. We have had neighbors from Franklin, South Milwaukee, and Racine visit our field and look forward to more opportunities to work together in the upcoming weeks.
The Impact team has been practicing for our FIRST® Impact Award presentation! We are super thankful for our sponsor Zünd, who printed and cut our impact boards. The FIRST® Impact Award (formerly the Chairman's Award) is the most prestigious award at FIRST. It honors the team that best represents a model for other teams to emulate and best embodies the mission of FIRST. It was created to keep the central focus of the FIRST Robotics Competition on the ultimate goal of transforming the culture in ways that will inspire greater levels of respect and honor for science and technology, as well as encouraging more of today’s youth to become science and technology leaders. We have been honored with this award 3 times in the last 5 years: 2020, 2022, and 2023.
Over the next 17 days, our programming team will be working on the autonomous and driver code that will make our robot successful. Our Design, Assembly/Repair, and Fabrication teams will be hard at work iterating, fixing, and making a plethora of spare parts to keep us running at our upcoming competitions. Our business and media team will make sure we have plenty of RTR buttons to give away at each event. And our scouting team will have data on every team we will see in weeks 5 and 6. We could not do this without the incredible support we receive from our sponsors, our families, the school, and the district. Remember, our door is always open; please let us know if you would like to stop by for a tour.
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