Team History

TEAM HISTORY 

Founded in 2006, the Lindblom Robotics program began with the formation of FRC team 1781. The team started with approximately eight students, two mentors, and a few hand tools. This remained consistent for the first five years of the team's existence. There was an uptick in participation in 2012 as the first classes of Academic Center students entered their Sophomore and Junior years of high school. 2013 was a monumental year for the team; with more recognition within the school community, and the achievement of attending their first World Championships at St. Louis, Missouri, in the Newton Division. Inspired by the amazing designs at Worlds, the team began CADing its first designs and getting machining assistance from the tooling design shop at Shure Inc. Over the next three years, Team 1781 would grow to more than 25 students and continue to improve.

Through the creation of the Chicago Robotics Alliance, an 

effort established by mentors throughout the Chicago 

community, Lindblom began work to create training 

modules, and resources for mentors and students alike 

and in the fall of 2019 hosted the first CRA training 

sessions. They included sessions for mentors and students 

covering topics like team management, CAD and CAM, 

and Programming. Furthermore, the CRA established 

parts sharing for the upcoming season, and Lindblom 

Robotics also began fabricating parts for other FRC and 

FTC Teams. 

The 2020 and 2021 years were quite challenging with the 

pandemic. Lindblom Robotics has begun expanding 

engineering programming to the 7th grade with a new 

STEMLab7 class and the requirements of remote learning 

have inspired the team to create additional CAD resources 

and low-cost open hardware robotics platforms like the 

LindBot for classes and at-home learning. 

The LindBot is a small robot that implements mechanical 

design through 3D printed parts, Electronics, and 

programming using Arduino and Micro: bit 

microcontrollers. It is an inexpensive fabrication, and 

hands-on design takes learning beyond kit bot platforms 

and enables students to engage in robotics, vision 

systems, and mechanical design. These robots act as a 

stepping stone for student development into FRC and 

Lindblom's most advanced small-scale platform for 

developing autonomous vehicles - DuckieTown. 

The DuckieTown project was conceived in 2016 as a 

graduate class at MIT. A group of over 15 Postdocs and 5 

professors were involved in the initial development. The 

goal was to build a small-scale and cute platform that still 

preserved the real scientific challenges inherent in a full- 

scale autonomous robot platform. It helps programmers 

learn about autonomous systems. After receiving a 

generous donation from the Toyota Technical Institute of 

Chicago and the DuckieTown Foundation, Lindblom 

Robotics is developing and implementing a high school 

curriculum to help students develop an understanding of 

odometry, machine learning, and automated driving 

systems. 

It is impossible to say how much further the Lindblom 

Robotics program will expand and develop, but we are 

excited about all of the possibilities, and we invite you to 

join our community and our work to reshape the future of 

technology.