Saline Singularity are Robotics All Stars

The Saline Singularity FIRST Robotics Team 5066 is making a name for itself at competitions this year.

In a district competition in Milford, they won the Rising All Star Award, which is intended for teams that are showing rapid development in their programs, and then at the competition recently hosted in Saline they won the Imagery Award, which is for the visual branding of a team and was awarded to the them in large part because their robot’s design contained color panels that matched their team shirts, which were custom printed by a company the team is familiar with. This award celebrates attractiveness in engineering and outstanding visual aesthetic integration of machine and team appearance.

These awards are giving out to groups who have unique attributes that lead to growth of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) programs within their communities. Promoting STEM and Robotics is a goal for the Saline team.

Saline Singularity is a robotics team and STEM advocacy group that has about 30 student members and eight adult mentors. They compete in the FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition) robotics season each year and promote the expansion of STEM education within the Saline and Ann Arbor areas. Their central purpose is to prepare kids in Saline for high-paying future jobs in STEM fields.

In being part of the team, the students are tasked with building a robot from scratch in just six short weeks to compete with other teams. With this, students have the opportunity to work on various aspects of the engineering design process, including mechanical, electrical, programming, CAD (computer aided design), scouting, and with the business and outreach team. They also participate in various outreach activities to promote STEM in the community and spread the ideas of FIRST, including gracious professionalism and cooperation. 

At the Saline event overall, Singularity finished in 9th place, out of 38 teams.  The Saline competition is an FRC competition run out of Saline High School. It brings about 3,000 people into Saline each year to compete and spectate. The student members of Saline Singularity put in a lot of the work in setting up for the event, which is part of what makes FIRST unique as an organization. 

The Saline team is looking forward to the next competition.

Photo 1: The winning team. Courtesy of Saline Singularity FIRST Robotics Team

Photo 2: Saline Singularity FIRST Robotics Team’s robot.