Our Community

Montclair Robotics has been actively involved in reaching out to our and beyond. The Montclair Robotics Team has worked to build strong robots, but in the process have also built a strong role model of a team. We are proud of what we have accomplished, but also look towards accomplishing even more in the years to come. Team 555: Montclair Robotics tries each year to be a role model for other teams to follow. Through our many efforts to build a presence in our community, Montclair Robotics has influenced people of all ages to become involved with our team and teh FIRST program. We have worked to spread the interets of math, science, enginering, and technology, and in years past, we have established a FTC team, three VRC teams, and several FLL team throughout the Montclair School District. Be this by our outreach programs, our mentorship of other teams or our district wide involvement in FIRST , the Montclair Robotics Team continues to set a standard for others teams to follow.

2010

In order to raise awareness and draw more attention to the importance of supporting the team, this year Montclair Robotics held a presentation and a demonstration of the robot during the build season at the Board of Education meeting. Montclair Times has also published updates about the team's progress during the year, as well gave a description of competitions we were planning on attending, so that our community could come cheer for us. At the high school we helped out our FTC team, which we hope to get ready to officially compete next year. At the end of the year we held our traditional Montclair Society of Engineers social to thank our sponsors and mentors for their continued support.

2009

Our community is very suportive of our team's FIRST initiative. Our sponsors are primaraly based within our community which allows for our team to build strong relationships within our community with them throughout the season. Each year, our FRC team hosts a FIRST Lego Legue Competition for the middle school students in our town. Montclair Robotics has has such a great influence on the community's interest in robotics that two private VEX Robotics Teams have been established during the past two years.

In September of every year, Team 555 plans a day for Rand Elementary School Kindergardeners to take a tour of the Montclair High School Auto Shop where we work during the build season and throughout the school year. Our team members interact with the young children and give demonstartions of our robots. We also show them some basic tools and equipment in the shop and explain how simple machines work. This intrigues the children greatly and instills in them some scientific consepts of physics and mechanics. After the visits, many of the young children express an interest in robots and machines and we have started a Jr.FLL team at that school.

In addition to our involvement with the young people of our community, Montclair Robotics, in conjunction with Montclair Society of Engineers, hosts an event to show-off our hard work. It is an annual preview event when we open our doors to the members of our community, including local reporters and fans, so that they can understand the FIRST program and admire our great accomplishments. The night consists of a pizza dinner followed by an ice cream social and thorough discussions and demonstrations of the robot. We invite our sponsors to attend the evening gathering, and they are always spreading our good reputation to their friends and falilies to help us gain additional support.

The team does a fine amount of fundraising that is targeted towards the community. In past years, the team has held many successful pancake breakfasts that attract many high school, middle school, and elementary school students along with enthusiastic parents and teachers. This past year, the tean decided to try something different and we worked in a partnership with the Montclair Adult School that offers evening classes at the high school. Each week during the fall and early winter, the team would set up am extensive bake sale that catered to the likes and needs of the adult students. By the end of the fifteen week session, we had fundraised over $1,400 and this year that money is being used to give partial scholarships for our team members to attend our competitions.

For several years, Team 555 has hosted a competition for FLL teams at Mount Hebron, one of the middle schools in our town. This past December, a total of elevel FLL teams were in attendance, five of which are Montclair teams. Each member on the FRC team played a major part in setting up, maintenance, and cleaning up the popular and successful event. It has been through our experience with the FLL competitions that many of out younger team to continue their participation with robotics by moving up to the various FIRST teams that the Montclair School district has to offer. It is extremely rewarding for us as senior participants on the FRC team to be considered "heroes" by the younger generation of scientists.

Montclair Robotics is very focused on having a strong friendship with each other as well as other FIRST teams. Close relationships are paramount to a solid team structure and smooth operations of the robot. The friendships that we have nurtured are an extreme asset to our team's ability to work well and efficiently withh otehr teams. At the New Jersey Kick-Off event at NJIT, Team 555 worked intimately with Team 41 as well as Team 522 to hold an informative workshop about the new electronics system for this season. Other members of our team worked with some rookie teams to develop ideas for fundraising and team management. Our joint efforts with other teams exemplify our morals about teamwork and gracious professionalism.

2008

This year was the third year that we participated in our town's Fourth of July parade, we always take part in this event because it is a fun way of getting out into our community and explaining to people what we do and why we do it. The parade also gives us the opportunity to get local contacts with engineering experience and to also get people outside of the engineering community to get interested and help us in any way they can. This last year our float won second place in the competition for the best float, we were amazed because we had not even known there was an award. The team had just enthusiastically decorated a dump-truck with kids, speakers, FIRST/team logos and techno music as we drove through town with our robots in tow.

Volunteer work is crucial to the continued existence of FIRST. Team 555 takes this to heart, and we ourselves volunteer when we can to help FIRST. Last year, several key members as well as one of the mentors volunteered at the NYC Regional at the Javits Center, we helped in the set-up, operation, and break-down of the event. The team will always volunteer wherever needed. At the Denver Regional, after the team had won the regional, we aided the volunteers there by dismantling the practice field, as they were underhanded at the time. Alumnus of 555 have also become very involved in the FIRST community. Their commitment to the program remains strong, even after graduation. One of our alumni is on the Finger Lakes Regional Planning Committee. This year alone, alumnus have volunteered at FLL events and are volunteering in key roles at, at least, 6 separate regional events as well as the Championship Event. Additionally, alumni have gone on to mentor other FRC teams such as team 2070 and team 1930.

Team 555 over the years has never ceased to spread the FIRST ideals. In 2003, we helped team 1156 from Brazil learn to program their robot at the NJ Regional, where it was the first year autonomous was introduced. In 2005, we were part of the creation of St. Joseph's HS Team 1626. We also helped team 1617, and sent several of our members during the build season to their school to aid them when, a few weeks into build season they had made little progress. We also sent members to assist during their regional event. After the Championship event in 2005, we hosted an off-season competition at our high school, Montclair Mayhem, in which 10 pre-rookie teams were involved, and were able to drive modified robots from previous years to spark interest and to assure they would start an official team in the 2006 season. Also in 2005, our team was selected to be one of two teams that would serve as the US representatives of FIRST Robotics, and traveled to the Globaltech exposition in Brazil. The team and robot participated in a scrimmage in front of thousands of spectators which helped the Brazil regional competition to come into existence. In 2006, we helped create an all-girls team in our high school, Team 1929, who we continue to support today.

2007

The Montclair Robotics Team, due to a rapidly growing number of new members, used unique ways to teach skills: fabrication, design, pneumatics, etc. We hold workshops to teach the basics of these skills, and we had the team practice these skills in a unique way. This last year, we used 3 VEX kits to have the team practice their skills. The team was divided into 3 VEX teams and tasked with building 1/3 scale robots of last year’s competition. Through this, our team learned new skills, sharpened existing skills and got our new members even further interested in robotics.

Starting last year with an all-girls FIRST Lego League team, the Montclair Robotics Team has been trying to get more women involved in FIRST. Team 555 feels that it is important for more women to be involved in first. The team has always had a strong female presence on the team, and to increase that female involvement even more the team was upgraded to an all girls’ FRC team this year, Team 1929. Not only is 1929 one of the only all-girls teams in the country, it also makes Montclair High School the first or one of the first schools to have two FRC teams operating out of it. Team 1929, has done all their own design, fabrication, programming, etc on their own with only minor guidance from us. They will be competing at the Hartford Regional Competition this year, with members of 555 attending to cheer them on. We feel that by having a robot built completely by females makes a strong statement about how the engineering community is not just for men.

The Montclair Robotics Team has also made efforts to increase involvement in Montclair High School’s student body. On May 13th, 2005, the Montclair Robotics Team held seven assemblies to the student body to increase awareness and interest in the team. As a result of this, we have seen many freshmen joining along with many upper classmen. The Montclair Robotics Team also convinced the administration to add a Robotics Class in which many non-team members are enrolled and learning the fundamentals of design and fabrication. The Art Club and classes of Montclair High have gotten involved this year by drawing the artwork on the robot’s shipping crate. With more and more groups becoming involved, Team 555 is becoming a school-wide organization.

In addition to promoting engineering and technology within our own school, we also take pride in mentoring other FIRST teams as well. In the fall of 2004, we made a presentation to St Joseph’s Catholic School in Metuchen, NJ to generate student interest in robotics. As a result of our work, St Joseph’s started Team 1626. In the 2005 season, Team 555 mentored Team 1617 and Team 1689 as well. Out of these teams, Team 1626 won the Highest Seeded Rookie Team Award at the New Jersey Regional and Team 1617 placed the highest out of any team in Newark. In 2006, we are currently mentoring Team 1617, Team 1862 and Team 1929. These teams get help ranging from design suggestions to where to buy certain parts to how to transport your entire team to an event. We also make an effort to stay in contact with all teams we have mentored and see how they are doing after their rookie years. Our mentorship of Team 1617 was unique as mentoring comes. On the Saturday two weeks before the 2005 build season ended, Mr. Kloberg, Senior Mentor of New Jersey, came to Montclair High School and told us of a team with only four members who were just assembling their kit’s frame and transmissions. Within a few days, three members of our team and one advisor went to NJIT to aid Team 1617. By Friday of that week, with the two teams working together, Team 1617 had a functioning robot. Team 555 then sent several members to Trenton to help our mentored teams, mainly 1617, in case they ran into any problems.

The Montclair Robotics Team has also made an effort to increase participation in the FIRST Lego League by starting Lego League Teams in all three of Montclair’s Middle Schools. By doing so, we have now gotten students as young as 11 interested in robotics, science and engineering. These teams now feed directly into the High School’s FIRST Robotics Competition team, increasing involvement in Team 555 by close to 50% in the last year alone. It is this kind of district wide involvement in FIRST that makes the Montclair Robotics Team a role model to others. The model we strive to create not only is restricted to the build season. Throughout the competition and whole year, our team tries to show our gracious professionalism. During the finals of the 2005 Arizona Regional, one of the robots in 555’s opposing alliance had a serious mechanical failure and could not repair it in their allotted time-out. Despite having had mechanical failures of our own, our alliance decided to give our time-out to the other alliance so that the final matches would be as fair as possible. Due to this, both alliances competed with its original robots for the rest of the finals. We felt that this act demonstrated how all teams should react because FIRST is not about winning, its about the promotion of science and technology.

To promote science and technology through FIRST additionally, we brought FIRST to our school. On May 14th, 2005, the Montclair Robotics Team hosted a friendly, off-season competition at Montclair High School. Over 25 teams attended the competition, which went from 8:00AM to about 6:00PM. Originally, eight Newark teams would not have been able to attend due to financial reasons, but Team 555 decided that having teams compete was more important that the entrance fees. In addition to this, Montclair Mayhem was the first competition where the pre-rookie teams competed. Team 555 organized older teams from the area to donate the use of their robot for the day to a team that would not officially be registered until the 2006 season. This let new teams have the experience of competing and gain student interest in FIRST months before they would even start their first season. Team 555 also reaches out to our community. Each year, Team 555 takes our team and robots to locations to demonstrate what FIRST is. In January 2005, the Montclair Robotics Team presented both a video on FIRST and our 2004 robot to 25 teachers at Liberty Science Center with the intentions of getting robotics incorporated into curriculums in New Jersey schools. Also that month, we presented our robot and team video at a local Barnes & Noble to children and strangers who had never heard of a robotics competition like FIRST, and who were thoroughly impressed. Shortly after the ship date of the 2005 Build Season, the Montclair Robotics Team made a presentation to UPS in an effort to secure UPS support of FIRST in coming years. As part of the FIRST community, the Montclair Robotics Team has, and will, continue outreach efforts to increase awareness, increase participation and increase support for FIRST.

Last year, Team 555 had the honor of promoting science and technology through FIRST on a global level. From May 16th through May 22nd, members of the Montclair Robotics Team attended the GlobalTech Invitational in Port Alegre, Brazil as one of two teams from North America chosen to represent FIRST. This friendly competition was held in an effort to raise funds and awareness in the Brazil towards starting more teams and a regional competition. Throughout the six-day event, over 70,000 people attended the event and more than US$100,000 were raised. According to the mentor of Team 383, it is almost guaranteed that they will be holding their own regional event in 2007. As FIRST becomes more and more international, it is these events that will tie the FIRST community together as a whole.