Bishop Guertin High School initially fielded a FIRST Robotics team back in 1993, through the sponsorship of Ingersol Rand. In that second year of FIRST Robotics Competitions, there were a total of 28 teams nationwide, and the Championship Competition was actually held in Bishop Guertin's auditorium. Playing the game Rug Rage, our robot placed 9th overall. In 1994, the BG team built Paragon, which battled in the game Torture Tower and finished the Championship Competition in fifth place. Unfortunately, financial hard times struck our sponsor, and the team folded.
In 2002, through the significant efforts BG parents Dave Martinez and Tom Moran, Team 811 was formed. St. Joseph’s Hospital gave us the use of the ground floor of the NH Catholic Charities Building, and MIT Lincoln Laboratories provided us with financial sponsorship, used tools, and surplus furniture. From these lowly beginnings, these “second-time rookies” built ARC (the Amazing Robotic Cardinal) in 2002 to play Zone Zeal, and competed in both the UTC Regional Competition in New Haven and the Championship Competition at EPCOT in Florida.
In the following year, we built an interesting robot named Red Streak to play Stack Attack. Red Streak was swift and nimble, and incorporated a four-bar lift to stack the game’s plastic storage bins. Unfortunately, due to its three-wheel design, Red Streak tended to be slightly unstable on the playing field’s ramps. During the Granite State Regional Competition in Manchester NH, Red Streak toppled several times, including twice in single match. Our students, however, displayed an indomitable spirit, and continued cheering in the face of these disasters. In recognition of this enthusiasm, we were awarded the Johnson & Johnson Sportsmanship Award.
Team 811 reached unprecedented heights in 2004, when Red Streak 2 was built to play FIRST Frenzy: Raising the Bar. Despite a mediocre performance in Manchester, our students demonstrated to the judges that we live the ideals of FIRST, and were awarded the highest honor of a FIRST competition, the coveted Chairman’s Award. Buoyed by this success, we traveled to the Championship Competition in Atlanta, where students and mentors collaborated to fix the problems that dogged us in Manchester. As a result, we finished the qualifying rounds in 7th place, and battled fiercely in the finals to earn the Newton Division Finalist trophy.
During the 2005 season, our robot ARCTAN took part in Triple Play in both the Manchester, NH Regional and the Atlanta, GA Championship Competitions. ARCTAN was a FIRST attempt for 811 at both an articulated arm and a pneumatic-based robot; unfortunately it suffered from many design problems, not the least of which was an excessively high center of gravity. While we did not do as well as we hoped, we did win the Granite State Regional Imagery Award. This award recognized our efforts to incorporate our team’s number and logo into the aesthetic design of the robot, thus “branding” the robot as ours.
The 2006 season saw the creation of a robot affectionately dubbed MISTT (which stood for “Mr. I's Stupid Throwing Thing”). MISTT participated in Aim High, and represented a number of idea improvements and innovations, such as the use of a collaborative design process (to garner input from all students), the Kit-Of-Parts drive train and chassis frame, and omni-wheels (instead of skid steering) for amazing agility. The result was an almost entirely student designed and built robot that could pick up, store, dump and shoot a large number of balls, score points autonomously, climb the ramp with ease, and (due to its very low center of gravity) right itself from all but the most extreme tips. We only performed in Manchester, but we did win the GSR Website Excellence Award.
During the 2007 season Team 811 built Sparky, named after an unfortunate incident during construction, when sparks erupted from the VIC’s controlling two faulty motors. Leveraging off things learned from past robots, Sparky had an articulated arm, omni-wheel steering, and a low center of gravity. The arm / wrist / claw combination proved a tad difficult to maneuver during competition, but Sparky was still able to hang tubes consistently. The most impressive moment in the robot’s young life came when in performed the FIRST autonomous hanging of a Keeper ring at the Verizon arena, in front of the entire audience just after the opening ceremonies Saturday morning. Team 811 also won the Johnson & Johnson Sportsmanship Award at the Manchester regional, and in Atlanta we were invited into the Newton Division Quarter Finals by Team 247, “Da Bears” of Chicago.
For the 2008 competition the team built a two-tiered robot, allowing the lifting of the trackballs over the field’s overpass. This mechanism, half funicular and half elevator, ultimately lead to the naming of the robot Ella-Vader (Darth’s sister). Ella used an interesting suction system to grab onto the 40” diameter trackballs, which were then either driven at speed around the track or lifted (FIRST back and upwards on the funicular, then upwards via the elevator) up and over the overpass. At the Granite State Regionals, Team 811 was awarded its third Johnson & Johnson Gracious Professionalism Award.
2007 - Johnson & Johnson Sportsmanship Award
2006 - Web site Excellence Award
2005 - Imagery Award
2004 - Granite State Regional Chairman's Award
2004 - Championship Competition Newton Division Finalist
2003 - Johnson & Johnson Sportsmanship Award
