Originally, I asked the high school students to come up with something. They came up with Eagles and Fantasia. Ech!
So I sat down one day in the Physics Club room at umass and started thinking of names they could vote on. One of them was Rambots. I came up with this name when I saw the Rambo poster on the wall :).
I also came up with other cool names that got voted down :(:
Taylor Career Technical Center aNd Taylor Truman/Kennedy H.S. schools
Team T.N.T. 280
Taylor, Michigan
Last years Bot was named “MOOSE” because it looked like a moose with it’s grippers in the upright position (hey it was 3 am the night before ship date and I had the label maker out…the rest is history)
No name as of yet for this years Beast… Beast …hmmmmm…well maybe? nah… too soon to tell
you know, i was there at the meeting where our team and robot names were decided… and i still have no idea where they came from. and come to think of it, it had to indirectly have come from me, since brits don’t know about sporks. but now we’re S.P.O.R.K. = Secret Phrases Only Roboticians Know. or something like that. with our bot ‘ginger ninja’. that rhymes. really.
Our Team name is the N.E.W. Apple Corps… and we got our name because we are based in Appleton Wisconsin, hence Apple … and then N.E.W stands for North, East, West which are the three highschools involved in the Appleton Public School District. We also have some members from Xavier, which is a private school we just havent found a good way to incorporate them into our name yet. And our Robot name is Tobor, which is robot backwards. I’m not sure how that was come up with, maybe someone else from my team could answer that all I know is all of our robots have been named Tobor. Tobor I, Tobor II, Tobor III, Tobor IV and this year we’re working on Tobor V.
The response to this thread has been great! I love learning about how all of your team names came about (I especially like the N.E.W. Apple Corps, it’s very punny).
Keep it up! (and, just as a quick question, what do YOU think of OUR name?)
Much irony here. Our team was born in 1997-98 (details on our creation can be found in the “creation myth” on our website, http://home.earthlink.net/~nonnebots/about.html). As students from Nonnewaug High School, Nonne was a given, and what did we build? a roBot. Hence Nonnebots. Spanning the first two years, we were sponsored by a local engineering firm, and recieved a bit of cash from Nonnewaug. However, in our third and fourth year Nonnewaug cut off all funding and support towards our team, leaving us with just the engineering group. For these 2 years, we had no affiliation with the school whatsoever. (during the past 6 years, our school has changed administration [principle, vice principle, superintendant] 3 or 4 times, resulting in widespread instability in budget and spending). Yet at the demand of one of our parent volunteers, our team remained “Nonnebots.” (despite widespread, virtually 100% disagreement from students). Anyway, present year rolls around, and over the past summer, due to reasons far beyond our control, our sponsor could no longer support us, leaving our entire team sponsor and moneyless. Nonnewaug decided to throw us a bone and give us a small bit of cash. Not much, barely enough to register a regional, but we became an official “school club” once again. And so presently, Nonnebots. But still much to the protest of the student members.
The Baxter Bomb Squad name comes from the Mountain Home High School mascot - Bombers. The school was built just after WWII when it was a good thing to be a “bomber”. It is the only school in the US with that team name.
We have thought about if our name is still appropriate and have even talked to FIRST about it. Their thoughts were that a Bomb Squad is made up of “good guys” so it’s ok.
We have always been very sensitive about our shirts and this year our team decided not to wear them outside the FIRST venues.
Team #118 out of Houston is the Robonauts, because most of the team’s engineers (myself included) work at NASA on a project called (you guessed it) Robonaut.
The team’s robot last year was called Condor because it looked rather birdlike after it was built, due to the 15’ telescoping ball grabber arms, and the shorter pointed goal arm in the front. The previous year (before my time, but I’ll share the legend) the robot was called “Hot Rod” because whenever it moved, it popped a wheelie. 118 tends to wait until the robot has started to take shape before they determine a name.
Furious George was the name of Mr. Burn’s knife-fighting monkey on the Simpsons.
There was an episode where Homer was left in charge of Burn’s house, and took his yacht to international waters, where they, among other things, staged a monkey knife fight. When Burns came home to see his monkey bandaged up, he exclaimed, “Furious George! What happened to your beautiful face?”
Our first year we were the Blacksburg Power Surge (big suprise that one didn’t stick, but technically we weren’t allowed to use the name “Blacksburg High School” since that year we had no official school support. Since our team is now more established and has more support, we’re The Hokie GUARD
Hokie, from the mascot of Virginia Tech, where most of the team mentors are from, GUARD being both a regiment of soldiers, and an accronym, as inspired by the HOT team (heros of tomorrow). We’re still debating to keep the accronym or just leave it as guard with no other meaning, but if we keep the accronym, its
GUARD - Gladiators of Uniquely Accelerated Robot Development
Lol, my younger brother said the exact same thing when I said that. Since we are HUGE Simpsons fans, I think that knew it subconsciously, but it still seemed apropos because we have an English teacher as a mentor (strange, huh?).
*Originally posted by Maddie N: *
Our Team name is the N.E.W. Apple Corps… and we got our name because we are based in Appleton Wisconsin, hence Apple … and then N.E.W stands for North, East, West which are the three highschools involved in the Appleton Public School District. We also have some members from Xavier, which is a private school we just havent found a good way to incorporate them into our name yet. And our Robot name is Tobor, which is robot backwards. I’m not sure how that was come up with, maybe someone else from my team could answer that all I know is all of our robots have been named Tobor. Tobor I, Tobor II, Tobor III, Tobor IV and this year we’re working on Tobor V.
Yea, I believe the second year (TOBOR I) one of our students was just messing around and said “Hey! We sould call it TOBOR! That’s ‘ROBOT’ spelled backwards!” (Duh!) Every year after that we’ve kept the name and added a roman numeral… The first year our team was formed, we were at a different Appleton HS and the robot’s name from that year is unkown. So yea!
Lets see…how did we come up with our name again? Our full name if Nortel Networks “The RAID”. I know we were kicking names around and came up with that. RAID does stand for something… I’m going to go out on a limb and say RAID stands for Robotic Artificial Intelligent Development…
Yea, that should be right. And our robot name… is “Gus”. Though this year, it may be “Gus the 2nd”. Not sure though.
For those of you using Bosch…(our team did last year)…we decided to call it “Gus” because we need all the gussets to put the bot together. And we also said if the robot was female, it would have been “Guset”
Hi, and thanks to all of those who have posted. But, since i’ve only gotten 33 replies (three of them my own), I know there are only about 30 of the teams that have responded of the hundreds out there. C’mon, get those fingers typing and explain why YOUR team name is unique!
Yea, I believe the second year (TOBOR I) one of our students was just messing around and said “Hey! We sould call it TOBOR! That’s ‘ROBOT’ spelled backwards!” (Duh!) Every year after that we’ve kept the name and added a roman numeral… The first year our team was formed, we were at a different Appleton HS and the robot’s name from that year is unkown. So yea!
That’s my story 'n I’m sticking to it! **
Hey Tobor Fans!
Did you know that there’s been a movie made about your robot? Do you like adventure? Excitement? Romance? Crappy 1950’s sci fi?
We’re the Gear Grinders, but this is due to a ‘contest’ of sorts we held last year to decide on a new name, which replaced the unfortunate wrestling reference of the ‘NRO’, or the New Robot Order. So, moving past that, we came across the Gear Grinders, with our robot Boomer (Always has been Boomer, just 'cause)…I’m still of the opinion that a ‘Gear Grinder’ might not be the best name to give to a perfectly (hopefully) working machine…Sounds a bit like ‘Motor Burners’ or ‘Traction losers’ or the like.
Originally we were a combined team with 5 different high schools represented. Many of the students on that original team were from Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach. Though other cities with romantic names like Hawthorne were also represented. When they were picking the team name Beach 'Bots was suggested but not chosen. I think they were the South Bay Sparks or something like that. Another name of ill-omen.
The next year, for various reasons irrelevant to this discussion, Hope Academy and Hawthorne High decided to have their own teams. Since Hope Academy does not compete in any intermural sports EXCEPT robotics, we didn’t have a school mascot to fall back on.
I was at the meeting where we chose the name Beach 'Bots. Somebody remembered the name from the previous year and it seemed appropriate. After all the school is located in Hermosa Beach. It was also non-violent and would offend no ethnic groups.
We weren’t particularly successful in competition that year, but everybody seemed to like the name so we kept it the second year. That year we did fairly well in competition, we were in the semifinals at our regional, and placed in the top 10 % nationally.
Since we were starting to get a name, the third year we kept it again and I don’t think anyone has even considered changing it since. I certainly don’t remember it being voted on after the second year.
Officially our robot is just one of the team and goes by Beach 'Bot X.0 but some years it has a team nickname as well. I can remeber a couple of discussions about whether that year’s robot was a “he” or a “she”.
Our team got it’s name 4 years ago by taking a combination of the East Islip High School regular sports team name: the EI Redmen. Coupled with the type of product our very first sponsor, AIL Systems manufactured: Radar Jamming Equipment.
Put it together and you have : The RedJammers!!
We have kept the team name as it has become sort of a tradition.
The robot’s name changes every year. There are 4 elementary schools in the district and in the beginning of December the team holds a ‘name the robot’ contest. They visit each of the elementary schools with the previous years robot, performing demonstrations and promoting FIRST and the team. Then ballot boxes are left in the schools and retrieved a week later. One finalist from each elementary school is chosen and each of those students receives a team T-shirt (itself a major fashion statement of style and grace!)
Last year’s robot was named EInstein (a capital EI for East Islip) Geez! I wish the team had a dollar for all of the “robby the robot” entries received.
This years name hasn’t been announced yet. Soon though soon, when the time is right…
Actually our team name has a pretty good story behind it. Two years ago our team was formed when a number of students were dropped from the official school team under still questionable reason. However, the students refused to give up on FIRST and with the help of one parent in particular they found a sponsor and college to promote their team. As a result the name “Las Guerrillas” came naturally. Up until this year the two teams enjoyed comepeting against one another, but as the number of students on the official school team dwindled those on 469 continued to grow and the school team met a demise over summer of 2001. The truly ironic part is that just within the last couple of weeks our team has become the new official school team. I used to be on the former official school team, and I swear there was more drama between the two teams than in a soap opera but things worked out in the long run. Oh by the way last years FIRST bot was named Cornelius after the mean ape in “Planet of the Apes” and we named our 2001 CDI bot Kurchec after the biggest gorilla in “Tarzan” I think it was.