Social Responsibility

Delphi FIRST team wins Engineering Inspiration Award at St. Louis Regional

The Delphi-sponsored TechnoKats FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics team started its 17th season by finishing second at the St. Louis Regional and winning the regional's prestigious Engineering Inspiration Award.

The annual competition was created to help students discover the rewards and excitement of science, engineering and technology.

"Our students did a great job in every aspect of the competition," said Amy Przybylinski, Delphi Electronics Group lead engineer for the team. "This was our first event of the season and everyone contributed to the team's success. It was especially exciting to be selected to win the Engineering Inspiration Award."

The Engineering Inspiration Award celebrates a team's outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering and engineers, both within the team's school as well as the community. Judges look at the extent and inventiveness of the team's efforts to recruit students to engineering, the extent and effectiveness of the team's community outreach efforts and the measurable success of those efforts.

For the competition, the TechnoKats have been working since January to build this year's robot, called "HamTray," from a kit of parts made up of motors, batteries, a control system and a mix of automation components. The Kokomo, Ind., high school students work with teachers, Delphi engineers and parents during a six-week period to design and build their robot in preparation for regional and championship competitions.

In this year's game, "FIRST Overdrive," the robots are designed to race around a track knocking down 40-inch inflated "trackballs" and moving them around the track, passing them either over or under a six-foot, six-inch overpass. Extra points are scored by robots positioning the trackballs back on the overpass before the end of the match. The game pits two three-team alliances against each other.

"Our students did an awesome job in the pits, maintaining the working condition of the robot," said Przybylinski. "Our drive team did great on the field and the scouting crew collected valuable information that was used in creating a strategy to use against our opponents. The students who worked on the Chairman's Award submission did extremely well and their performance was noticed by the Engineering Inspiration Award judges. We are all very proud of each of our kids -- they put their heart and soul into the TechnoKats and it clearly shows."

The TechnoKats will participate in the Purdue Boilermaker Regional March 13-15 in West Lafayette, Ind. Przybylinski is the chairperson for the Purdue Regional. This regional is a free event and open to the public. The competition is held in the Armory on the Purdue campus next to Elliott Hall. The championship competition is scheduled for April 17-19 in Atlanta.

2008 Delphi-sponsored FIRST teams