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216 Team Number
288 Team Number

 

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RoboDawgs and West Michigan

The Robodawgs and Team Thunder competing together on the blue alliance.The RoboDawgs formed as the first F.I.R.S.T. Robotics Competition team in the Greater Grand Rapids area. During our rookie year we only had one sponsor the local engineering firm X-Rite. The team started with a teacher from Grandville High School as the coach and a handful of mentors, who are still deeply involved with F.I.R.S.T. on the regional level. With the team being as small as it was and with a limited budget, the team did not have the resources to travel to any of the competitions. As a solution to this problem the team hosted an invitational competition in the gymnasium of the high school. At one point the teams motto was to "Grow more teams", and in accordance with this motto 7 area teams can be traced to the RoboDawgs.  Over time this invitational grew in popularity and F.I.R.S.T. decided that it was time to create the West Michigan Regional as a result of multiple teams springing up in West Michigan.

 


2001 National Honorable Mention for Technical Execution award2001 Motorola Quality Award2002 Championship Kliener Caulfield and Byers Entrepeneurship Award2003 General Motors Industrial Design Award2003 Delphi Driving Tomorrow's Technology Award


The first few years were building years, but they ended up as some of the most successful years in the RoboDawgs history. For example in 2001 the team received the National Honorable Mention-Technical Execution Award as well as the Motorola Quality Award and even attended the National competition that year. The following year, we won the Championship Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers Entrepreneurship Award for our business planning and structure. In 2003 we won the General Motors Industrial Design Award for the intuitive design of our robot, as well as the Delphi's "Driving Tomorrow’s Technology" Award for our intricate and clean electrical design. In 2009, 288 received the Xerox Creativity Award for the two stage air defense cannon, designed to deflect in coming balls.

 

Stack Attack West Michigan Regional Finalist Triple Play St. Louis Regional Finalist

That same year we were runners up at our home regional in West Michigan. Our 2004 robot finished in the top 16 alliances at the Championship event. We built on that strong finish from the previous season as a finalist in the 2005 St. Louis regional. The team has worked through some struggles with the loss of sponsors and mentors, to create a second team, number 216 to compete side by side with the original team number 288. Team 216 made it to the final match at the 2009 Traverse City District competition, finishing as runner-up. 216 went on to win the West Michigan District held at Grand Valley State University.