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.
