3 Questions!!! (1/28/04)

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Andy Grady

3. That would be GRT, team 192 in 1999, won an award for it!

As a long time FIRST'er, I've seen a few awards given to certain teams at certain times that stand out among other awards. This one is definitely one of my favorites.

In 1999, Gunn Robotics was one of those teams who often felt dis-respected and overlooked. During those years, the west coast teams were very young teams comparted to the northeast and midwest teams.

They started out the year by having a strong and rough-playing robot at the San Jose Regional. They got some attention for playing hard but fair. During one of the elimination matches, they got DQ'ed for tipping over an opponent near the puck. It was a debatable call that was discussed in detail on these forums. Daniel Lehrbaum was the student team leader. He portrayed his case very well and did a good job of representing his team. He easily connected with Dr. Joe, Mike Bastoni, myself, and many others on these forums.

I got to know Daniel due to the way they "played the game" that year, since we kinda did the same thing with arm mechanisms. One of the features of their arm was the use of this new sensor (back then), the "gyro". No one else really used it, except them. The neat thing about it was that their electrical team was all students. Their lead electrical student wrote a white paper on how they applied the gyro to their arm. It was fairly simple, but elegant. Many people went to their pit to talk to Daniel and this lead electrical student about their gyro usage. Many engineers would rave over what these students did... it was top notch work.

Yet... still these guys were thought of as just a bunch of kids from one of those west coast teams. They still did not get much respect.

Then... it was time for the awards show at the Championships in Epcot. There we all are, 12,000 people in the stands. Awards were given out teams would send up their 2 designated people to receive their given award. Then, it was time for the controls award. Team 192 was honored for their effort of implementing the gyro sensor in a successful manner on their arm. So, this lead electrical student (he had a red mohawk) runs down from the upper part of the stadium, jumps on stage, and gets the award. The 2 designated students did not go up... he did. It was pretty darn cool. Over 1/2 of the crowd stood up and cheered for him and his teammates on 192.

Andy B.