The Robots are coming…

Don’t worry, Victron aren’t about to replace their distribution & dealer network with robots. What they are doing though is sponsoring the next generation of thinkers and engineers.

Team Rembrandts are a group of Dutch high school students who, along with support from their University peers, are building on their success in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) of 2013. In their inaugural year they won the 2013 North Carolina Regional – Rookie All-Star Award.

To date, in the 2014 season, they have won the Engineering Inspiration Award  in the  North Carolina Regionals. As a second year FRC team, this Engineering Inspiration Award is the most prestigious award anyone could win.

And now (with less than 24 hours to the start) they are competing for a place in the World Finals in St.Louis from 21-26 April.

Victron are delighted, as a bronze sponsor, to have helped in getting this group of successful young men and women to St. Louis, by supporting their travel to the world finals.

Whilst Aerial Assist and Ultimate Ascent are robotic games terms we aren’t familiar with, we are however impressed by the success to date and we wish Team Rembrandts the very best for the world finals. Practice matches start on Wednesday the 23th. From Thursday the 24th through to Saturday the 26th they will compete in the qualification matches.

Status update: This morning I received an email from Henk van der Wal, the senior mentor of the team. Right now I’m told the team members are fast asleep after a long day of traveling to St. Louis, however the team are going to send us a blog update on their progress, just as soon as they are acclimatised to their new surroundings.

As Henk said “It will be a real challenge to reach the finals because there are a lot of very good teams competing, but we will give it our best”.

We look forward to hearing more and in the meantime why not give them a like on Facebook or follow them on Twitter – and show Team Rembrandts your support!

John Rushworth