2011 Season Press
MechWarriors prep for last competition before finals
2010 Season Press
MechWarriors take Quality Award at OCCRA
2008-09 Season Press
Members named to OCCRA All County, Honorable Mention
"Road to the Championship" video footage:
The Brother Rice-Marian Mech Warriors Robotics team is a Co-ed extra curricular activity that has been offered by Brother Rice for the past 4 years. Students that are involved in this activity put their minds together to come up with the best idea they possibly can in order to build a competitive robot. There are two separate seasons for the team. The fall season is a smaller scale competition where we compete (only) against teams from the Metro Detroit area. Students can expect to spend approximately 6 to 8 hours per week building the robot.
The winter season is a much larger-scale competition where we compete against teams from across the country (and even from other countries). Generally, the team will participate in 3 Regional Events, against 40 to 60 other schools. The culmination of the winter season is the Championship Event located in Atlanta, GA. We have competed in Atlanta the last 2 years (2005 & 2006), and hope to qualify again this year. Students can expect to put in 9-12 hours of building per week.
For more of a description of our seasons, see the paragraphs below entitled O.C.C.R.A. and F.I.R.S.T.
O.C.C.R.A.
OCCRA stands for Oakland County Competitive Robotics Association. OCCRA is an organized competition between the robotics teams of about 30 different high schools in Oakland County, Michigan, USA, that takes place each year in autumn and ends in early December.
Although inspired by FIRST Robotics, OCCRA differs from FIRST in several key ways. For one thing, the student members of the robotics teams are expected to design and build the robots without direct assistance from their adult mentors, in order to give them more responsibility.
In OCCRA, teams are also forbidden from having corporate sponsorships. Each team is responsible for raising its own money to promote teamwork and to teach students to work within a budget.
Furthermore, "heavy machinery" is restricted. Lathes and other types of precision machinery are not to be used in the construction of OCCRA-bound robots. Instead, students build their robots with rulers, hacksaws, and cordless drills. This rule is intended to ensure equality among teams with varying resources (e.g. having a machine shop in the team's high school or in a team member's garage).
One key way in which OCCRA does emulate FIRST is that OCCRA maintains a policy of gracious professionalism.
F.I.R.S.T.
The FIRST Robotics Competition is an exciting, multinational competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way. The program is a life-changing, career-molding experience—and a lot of fun. In 2007, the competition will reach over 30,000 high-school-aged young people on over 1,300 teams in 37 regional events. Our teams came from Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Israel, Mexico, the U.K., and almost every U.S. state. The competitions are high-tech spectator sporting events, the result of lots of focused brainstorming, real-world teamwork, dedicated mentoring, project timelines, and deadlines.
Colleges, universities, corporations, businesses, and individuals provide scholarships to our participants. Involved engineers experience again many of the reasons they chose engineering as a profession, and the companies they work for contribute to the community while they prepare and create their future workforce. The competition shows students that the technological fields hold many opportunities and that the basic concepts of science, math, engineering, and invention are exciting and interesting.
The FIRST Robotics Competition challenges teams of young people and their mentors to solve a common problem in a six-week timeframe using a standard "kit of parts" and a common set of rules. Teams build robots from the parts and enter them in a series of competitions designed by Dean Kamen, Woodie Flowers, and a committee of engineers and other professionals. The competition has grown to 1,125 teams competing in 33 Regional Events, and The Championship held at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta where more than 8,500 high-school-aged young people participate.
FIRST redefines winning for these students. Teams are rewarded for excellence in design, demonstrated team spirit, gracious professionalism and maturity, and ability to overcome obstacles. Scoring the most points is a secondary goal. Winning means building partnerships that last.
If you have specific questions about Robotics,
please contact Coach Joseph Mohan via email
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