Siemens Sponsors 6 FIRST Robotics Student Teams in Ontario and Quebec

Jan 15 2016
     
For many Canadian high school students the new year and academic term brings with it the launch of a fresh FIRST Robotics competition season. Siemens Canada and its employees are playing an active role this year by sponsoring and supporting six enthusiastic robotics teams; five in Ontario and one in Quebec.

The FIRST Robotics competition is an intense “real-world engineering” challenge. Under strict rules, with limited resources and time limits, teams of 25 students or more raise funds, design a team “brand,” hone teamwork skills, and build and program robots to perform prescribed tasks against a field of competitors. Built from scratch in only six weeks, the robots compete in a series of high intensity “robo-sports” at events organized throughout Ontario and Quebec.

“The students engaged with FIRST Robotics teams represent the future leaders in Canadian industry and by supporting them we help cultivate an interest and a passion in technological innovation and engineering,” says Joris Myny, Siemens Canada’s SVP, Digital Factory and Process Industries & Drives. “This benefits not only our future leaders, but Canadian industry, communities and the country as a whole.”

The 2016 competition challenge “First Stronghold” was revealed January 9. First Stronghold is a medieval-themed tower defense game in which two alliances of three teams each compete to score points by breaching the opponent’s outer works and capturing the opponent’s tower.

In addition to a total $30,000 financial sponsorship of the teams, Siemens has provided an in-kind grant of laptops to some of the student teams, which have been refurbished by employee volunteers as part of the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility program. The laptops are preloaded with a free High School Edition of Siemens’ Solid Edge software to help students with the design of their robot. Solid Edge delivers advanced CAD technology used by leading companies. Other robotics teams can also download Solid Edge High School Edition.

Siemens volunteer mentors from a variety of disciplines will also be supporting the teams with educational talks and technical workshops. Siemens employees will also volunteer as judges at a FIRST Robotics competition.

The all-star line-up sponsored by Siemens includes the following teams: 
–    Knight Vision, Holy Names Catholic School, Windsor, ON
–    Chargers, Garth Webb Secondary School, Oakville, ON
–    Wildebots, Robert Bateman High School, Burlington, ON
–    The Red Devils, Oakville Trafalgar High School, Oakville, ON
–    Spartans, Craig Kielburger Secondary School, Milton, ON
–    Les aigles d’or, École secondaire Honoré-Mercier, Montreal, PQ