The FIRST Robotics Competition Team 1923, known as the Midknight Inventors of the West Windsor-Plainsboro High School, were highly appreciative and thankful to everyone, who had contributed to the success of the team, during the last two months.
Their team had competed with radio-controlled robots in a challenging game, which resembled closely the sports championships in the New Jersey Regional FIRST Robotics Competition and came out as the number three team among the 61 other high school teams who had come from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, and even Canada and Brazil. Next on the agenda would be the team competing in the Northeast Utilities Connecticut Regional, which would take place by the end of March, and then finally the St. Louis FIRST Championship from April 26-30.
Each year, a new game has been planned for the competitions, which would involve new challenges to evaluate the engineering and team working skills along with strategic thinking for the teams. They all receive a standard kit of parts for building the robot and a rules manual. The design and conception along with its programming are all up to the teams.
The FRC Team 1923 has a total of 40 students from both the North and South West Windsor Plainsboro High Schools, and the funding is done by the communities themselves. The team had built the robot this year in a storefront donated by the Cyzner Properties. The team had also received helpful grants from companies such as Montessori Connections, Bank of America, Novo Nordisk, MIM Software, Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Integra Foundation and Bristol-Myers Squibb along with significant contributions from individuals and local businesses. Presently, the team members along with the two Co-captains Kelsey Stevens and Jason Marcus were trying to organize $7000, which would be necessary to take care of the travelling expenses to attend the two meets.