FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) in the state of Michigan is a FIRST program for middle school students At Houghton Middle School, we have the three SnowBots teams: 10723 SnowBots Blue, 13284 SnowBots Silver, and 15270 SnowBots Red.
Resources for Teams
YetiBot build guide (revision 2015.1 – September 12, 2015)
Design instructions put together by 857 Superior Roboworks for building a basic robot chassis using the 2015-16 Modern Robotics-based control system. It can be assembled using only parts found in the Tetrix FTC Competition Set.
SnowBots History
The SnowBots rookie year was the 2015-16 FIRST RES-Q season.
2015-16: FIRST RES-Q
Team 857 Superior Roboworks began its involvement with FIRST Tech Challenge in the 2015-16 season. Until this point, there were no FTC teams in the Upper Peninsula. The first four FTC teams were 10040 Robotic Narwhals, 10041 Blackrock Bots, 10062 Robogators, and 10723 SnowBots.
On September 12, 2015, we hosted a kickoff event at Houghton Middle School with three teams from the Marquette area and one we were starting at Houghton Middle School. As a group, we watched the reveal video for FIRST RES-Q, spent time measuring and manipulating the official field, talked strategy, and had teams build YetiBot or PushBot 2. We thank FIRST in Michigan for donating a full field to us and game piece sets for every U.P. team.
Our robot was named Wilson; it could drop the two pre-loaded Climbers into the shelter basket, push the Debris blocks and balls into the floor zones, and drive onto the bottom portion of the mountain. The UP teams competed at Petoskey, with 10062 Robogators winning the event.
2016-17: Velocity Vortex
SnowBots went into the second year looking to take on more challenges. Our robot, named Rubik, could press the beacon buttons and catapult the Particle balls into the Center Vortex with its choo-choo mechanism. We again competed at Petoskey and won the Control Award for our efforts to claim the beacons in autonomous.
2017-18: FIRST Relic Recovery
In 2017, SnowBots started its second team, 13284 SnowBots Silver and renamed 10723 SnowBots to SnowBots Blue. At the Petoskey event, 10723 ranked #2, won the event, and won the Design Award; 13284 ranked #5 and won the Motivate Award. At the Houghton event, 10723 ranked #2 again and were finalists; 13284 ranked #15 and won the Judge’s Award. With their performance at Petoskey, 10723 competed at the State Championship, a first for the SnowBots program.
2018-19: Rover Ruckus
In 2018, SnowBots started its third team, 15270 SnowBots Red, which we ran as an all-girls team that year.