White Bear Lake FIRST(R) Robotics Team Designs "Dr. Robotnic" With SpaceClaim

CONCORD, MA - SpaceClaim, provider of 3D Direct Modeling solutions, today announced its sponsorship of the White Bear Lake FIRST Robotics team (Team 2207) from White Bear Lake, MN. SpaceClaim was alerted to the opportunity by team head mentor Joe Viavattine, a Principal Project Engineer with SpaceClaim customer Medtronic (also a team sponsor). SpaceClaim contributed software licenses and support for the high school students to create their entry, Dr. Robotnic.

This year's FIRST Robotics Competition presented a robotic challenge around a new game called Breakaway, in which each team's robots must score as many points as possible by moving the balls on the field into goals set up in each corner. The White Bear Lake team leveraged the ease-of-use and flexibility of SpaceClaim's software through prototyping and testing. Students were able to go quickly back and forth between their virtual and physical models, experimenting with different approaches. Dr. Robotnic, the completed robot, is capable of dribbling and kicking a ball and moving in six directions without the need to rotate.

"SpaceClaim makes it so easy to manipulate components within the assembly," said the team's head mentor Joe Viavattine, Principal Project Engineer, Medtronic. "The students were able to grab a few components, try different scenarios, see how the design looked and then move them back if it didn't accomplish the objective. Many great ideas came to the surface through this process. The students didn't have to worry about losing ground in trying out a lot of different approaches with SpaceClaim, as there was no harm in making errors."

More than 45,000 students on over 1,800 teams from around the world are competing this year. With only six weeks from the time each team receives its initial robotics kit to the submission date for the completed robot, time is of the essence in the design process. With his own experience using SpaceClaim at Medtronic, Viavattine knew the software would be an ideal tool for the students to use to express their wealth of creative ideas.

SpaceClaim also sponsored the FIRST Robotics Team from Steinart High School in Trenton, N.J.

"The FIRST Robotics Competition is inspirational and a terrific way for budding engineers and scientists to work as teams, learn new skills and have the gratification of creating a robot capable of solving complex challenges," said SpaceClaim CEO Chris Randles. "We were extremely pleased to be able to sponsor the White Bear Lake and Trenton teams and look forward to continuing our participation in the years ahead."

The preliminary round of competition for the White Bear Lake team will be April 1-3 at the Minnesota Northstar Regional event, which will be held in Mariucci Arena on the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis.