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Team History
At first, the AdamBots were simply known as the "Adams High School Engineering Club." The second year the team decided to use the name "Golden Eyes," but it didn't take hold. It wasn't until the team's third year that the name AdamBots was chosen as the official team name.
The team started under the mentorship of Mr. Alan Gibson, a physics teacher at Adams High School and Mr. Gasper Cairo and Mr. Paul Slaby, our connections with Siemens VDO. Year two brought Mr. Chris Smith, a physical science teacher, in to assist Mr. Gibson with the team. In 2001, Mr. Gibson retired and Mr. Smith continued to mentor the team. In 2003, Mr. Smith left Adams High School and Mr. John Hilburger, a physics and calculus teacher, took charge of the team. However, Mr. Hilburger moved out of state and Mr. Warren Hildebrandt moved from Rochester High School to Adams that year. Mr. Hildebrandt has been with the team since.
For four years after the team's conception, the AdamBots experienced minimal success. It was considered a huge accomplishment to build a working gear box; however, this all changed in 2003.
The game in 2003 was called Stack Attack. The object of the game was to stack boxes on top of each other. A senior on the team, Carl Fristad, suggested a simple design for this challenge: build a robot capable of performing one simple task very well. The team decided upon a simple design of a powerful drive train with two simple arms extending from the edges of the robot. The arm design was eventually simplified to just two flaps extruding from the edges of the robot. The robot was named Penelope. At the first regional of the season, the Mid West Regional in Chicago, the robot performed exceptionally. Team 45, The TechoKats, from Kokomo, Indiana chose our team as an alliance partner. This lead to our first Regional victory. At the next regional, the West Michigan Regional, the team won again.
In 2005, the team found the perfect solution to the FIRST game, Triple Play. There was much debate about the design of the robot, but eventually the fork lift design was decided upon. Rich Schuster and Jeremy Clemens were the builders extraordinare. They lead the building of the 2005 robot and eventually dubbed the robot Victoria.
The team did extremely well in its first regional. The team went to Sacramento and placed first place in seeding matches. Team 245 asked for the assistance of teams 766 and 1072, and, in the finals won first place at the Sacramento Regional. The team went on the win the Detroit regional with teams 217 and 301 and won a Silver Medal, second place, at the West Michigan Regional. The team won their trip to the Nationals where the team placed 2nd in the elimination round and picked teams 217 and 766 as alliance partners. The team went on to win the Archimedes division at the FIRST championships. The team placed third at Nationals losing to the eventual National Champions by only a few points.
In 2008, the team lost its main corporate sponsor Siemens VDO after a buyout by Continental Corporation. Team 245 was limited in its budget, but GM Finance picked up the slack and we were able to enter in both the Detroit and Ypsilanti competitions. The team also graduated all members of the successful 2005 season. Despite the challenges the team was able to win website awards and make the elimination rounds at both competitions.
In 2009, the AdamBots once again received a generous donation from General Motors, but the team lost the great Siemens VDO work area it used since it's inception. The team was left with only the option to work out of a back closet in the CAD room with only a small drill press. The team worked through these challenges and created Olympia , a very simple but extremely effective robot. Olympia had zero failures in 110 matches, and won multiple quality awards. The team won the Kettering District Event, MARC Competition, TARDEC IGVC Invitational and was a Finalist at the Lansing District Event. We also gained another website award.
