Our Sponsors

Latest News 09/04/2010

We Won the World Championships!

Last Minute Preparations

Welcome to Longhorn Robotics

The Longhorns

The Longhorns are composed of five junior high students from Calgary, Alberta, Canada who participate in the FIRST Tech Challenge robotics competition. They are a dedicated, serious team who meet four times per week to design, program, and run their robot. This is the first year that the Longhorns have participated in FTC.

FIRST Tech Challenge is a high school level robotics competition in which teams must drive a robot around a large field to perform various tasks. The organization behind the competition, FIRST, releases a new set of tasks each year. Teams must also maintain and update an “engineering notebook,” in which the team records their thoughts, experiences and challenges in preparing their robot for the competition.

The Longhorns recently won the 2009 world FTC competition in Atlanta, Georgia, which occurred in April. If you want to learn more about what the team’s currently doing, please read the blog below.

Looking for the old website? Click here.

Longhorn Robotics Retires

As you may have noticed by the total lack of activity on the site this past year, Longhorn Robotics has been put out to pasture. After seven years in FIRST, beginning as an FLL team and then graduating to FTC, this team has seen a lot of success, culminating with winning the FTC World Championships last year.

However with many of the teams core member moving into high-school this year, we were unable to get enough members to run a program this year. With the rest of the Championship winning team moving into high-school this year, it seems unlikely that Longhorn Robotics will be resurrected.

At this momentous point in the teams history, we would like to extend a very special thanks to the teams coach Mr. Sveen. He has been the driving force behind the team every year of its existence, and has inspired the team to greatness many times. Over the years Longhorn Robotics has had its struggles, but the parents and Mr. Sveen have always been there to makes sure that all of the kids who were part of this team could achieve their very best.


From all of us whose lives will forever be changed, because of this team,

Thank you Longhorn Robotics and Mr. Sveen for making our lives better!

Longhorns Win First Place in Atlanta

The whole alliance.

At the world FTC competition in Atlanta, Georgia, Longhorn Robotics took first place in robot performance, along with our alliance partners. The alliance from the Edison division competed against teams 577, 2818, and 39 from the Franklin division in a heated three-match final round.

The Longhorns' alliance partners, Robo Raiders (679) and Jr. Bomb Squad (92), had excellent full-featured robots, as well as being gracious and cooperative alliance partners. There were several instances during the matches where we really couldn't have succeeded without our alliance partners' skill.

Last Minute Preparations

We're nearly done.

Today, we did some finishing touches on the robot, adjusting our autonomous program, and some extra structural components.

Our programming is going quite well and we've also done some strategizing - this has more importance because of the higher performance standards we will face when we get to Atlanta. And as we get closer to the World Festival, jobs we have to do pile up - from getting some safety glasses to tuning our robot's durability to working on this website.

Our emphasis lately has really been on strategy. We've drawn up many scenarios our robot will encounter in autonomous, as well as strategies for differing levels of proficiency of our alliance partner and the opposing alliance during any given match.

Longhorns Appear on Global News Calgary

Yesterday, our team appeared on Global News Calgary, as part of Gil Tucker's news segment. The segment included an outline of this year's FTC competition, as well our own specific challenge of being a young rookie team. We had a very enjoyable interview with Gil Tucker, and this was really a great opportunity to spread the word about FIRST.

Longhorns Win Western Canada Regionals

The Longhorns won the competition at the Western Canada FTC Regionals in Vancouver, British Columbia last Saturday. The Longhorns were part of the winning alliance, along with the Captain team, SHIM1. We were the best robots in the competition in terms of robot performance. The Longhorns also won the Inspire award, the highest award a team can receive in FTC. We received this award for having a successful, reliable, and innovative robot design, good design phase documentation and an demonstration of the underlying values of FIRST. Both of these prestigious awards has an attached invitation to the World Competition in Atlanta, Georgia, which we are currently preparing for.

Longhorns Showcase FTC at FLL Tournament

Demonstrating our robot at the Alberta FLL Regionals

NRG Robotics Wins Teamwork Award at Alberta Regionals

NRG Robotics, the FLL division of Longhorn Robotics, went to compete in the Alberta regional competition last week in Edmonton. The rookie team, whose members are all in elementary school, competed against other teams who have members up to three years older. They won the first place award for Teamwork, and had the highest score of any elementary team at the competition. Congratulations to NRG Robotics!

Longhorns Win Third Place at Alberta Scrimmage

Last Saturday, the Longhorns competed at an unofficial tournament in Red Deer, Alberta, and placed third in Robot Performance. We won a prize of 500 dollars to help us in purchasing supplies and for future competitions. We hope to do even better at our next competition in the Western Canada regionals in British Columbia.

Longhorns Adopt FLL Team

Longhorn Robotics has decided to adopt a local FLL team, NRG robotics. The Longhorns will help out the team by directing them, answering their questions and imparting their knowledge of building and programming to the younger team. This is great way for the team to reach out into the community and encourage the growth of FIRST. Please visit the FLL page for more information about NRG Robotics.

FTC Releases Face Off Challenge

This week, FIRST released the new FTC challenge, Face Off. This will start the build season off with thousands of high school and junior high students working towards the goal towards making successful self-controlled and remote controlled robot and learning through the process. Information about this year's challenge can be found here.