WC15

Columbus Robotics Wins the Peachtree FIRST Regional!

Out of 66 teams, only one could hold the honor of winning alliance captain and that is FIRST Team 4188 from Columbus, Georgia. FIRST Robotics is the biggest STEM team sport for high school students in the world. It allows potential scientists and engineers to experience a full life cycle engineering experience where they start with an idea and end up with a complete working system, all in a six week build season. Teams from 8 states came to Atlanta, Georgia in late March to try to become the Peachtree Regional winner. Some of those teams have been in existence for over 20 years. Team 4188 brought a shorter robot than many teams but showed it could be consistent. That little blue robot was so consistent that it ended up as the 2nd highest scoring robot after 8 qualifying rounds. In the finals, Team 4188 chose Team 343 from South Carolina and Team 108 from Florida to take on 7 other alliances of super teams. Through the finals, the Columbus alliance got better and better and did not lose a single game during the playoffs.

The Columbus Space Program is the umbrella organization for the FIRST Robotics team and is run as a co-curricular organization. This means the students are recruited from academic classes so that they use what they learned during the day to apply after school. In effect, this model is a workforce development program where real skills are learned both technically and in terms of human factors. The success of the Columbus Space Program is based on support from the school district and local sponsors. The payoff of the success of the team is the clear statement to potential companies and potential employees that our community makes a serious effort to make STEM education opportunities available to prepare them for the best schools and eventually the best companies in the world, some right here in Columbus, Georgia.

The World Championships will have over 600 teams from all across the globe representing Australia, China, UK, Denmark, Israel, and many others. The Columbus team can go if they reach their funding goals. Total cost to attend is $20,000. Cost breakdown: Registration $5000 Robot costs $1500 (parts resupply, claw changes) Hotel rooms 12 x 4 x 100 = $4800 AirFare $250 x 20 = $5000 Ground Transportation 800 Subway passes, ATL long term parking $300 = $1100 Competition shirts: T-shirts 500, Mentor shirts 300 = $800 Spirit Items $500 Team lunches $600

TOTAL with some 4% contingency $20,000

Current sponsors for Team 4188's World Championship Bid: UTC, AFLAC - Platinum Sponsor TSYS - Bronze Mead Westvaco