History:

2005 Triple Play: This was our rookie year! We made it to the quarterfinals with the help of Team 759, Systemetric, and Team 354, Westinghouse Pirates, and were the only all-girls team at the NYC regional.

2006 Aim High: We increased the size of our team, improved our rank at the competition, and were the top all-girls team at the NYC regional.

2007 Rack n' Roll: We joined forces with Chapin, and invited one member from Hewitt. We put up our public website, ranking as high as 3rd on First topsite, making us one of the highest ranked teams in the world. We also won three awards (see Awards section), and were ranked 15 out of 41 teams.

2008 FIRST Overdrive: We welcomed many new members from Chapin, Brearley, and Hewitt. We are working on becoming more organized as a team, and taking our team to the next level. We look forward to competing with our new robot, Valkyrie.


The Founding of Double X

The Brearley Robotics Team, named Double X, (for our double x chromosomes as an all-girls team) was born during the autumn of 2004 when two girls, an eleventh grader and a ninth grader independently expressed enthusiasm for competing in the FIRST Robotics Competition. Together they persuaded a teacher to be their advisor. The eleventh grader had come to Brearley in her ninth grade year; the other had experienced robotics at Brearley as part of the fifth grade science curriculum, had taken summer and after school courses, and had captained the Brearley Middle School FIRST Lego League team in her eighth grade year.

Many Upper School girls responded to the formation of a team, but only a handful stuck with it through the fall. With the financial help of the Head of School, the team purchased a practice kit; some girls went to training sessions during the fall of 2004 at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, and others worked on challenges they set themselves. A generous grant from the Hennessy Family Foundation provided the funding needed for registration. In early January 2005, several members of the team, their parents and their faculty advisor went to a Kickoff event in Newark, New Jersey where the FIRST challenge was announced and the team received their kit of parts. During the next six weeks, the team had to design, build and program a robot no more than 5 feet tall and weighing less than 120 pounds to participate in the Triple Play challenge against other robots. Once the robot was shipped after the middle of February, the team would not see it again until it was uncrated at the NYC Regional Event in late March.

Among the many challenges faced by this and all rookie teams is that of finding expert help: engineers and programmers who would mentor the team. Two mentors from NYC MTA did visit school occasionally, but often their hours and the girls' free time did not match. Late in the build season a mechanical engineer, Steve Bossy and a graduate of a college engineering course, Zach Oberman, pitched in and came to school several times a week to help the team. Some programming help was provided by an IBM programmer and a computer expert from Credit Suisse First Boston. By this time the faculty team had grown to three teacher/advisors, which helped tremendously in dividing the work load and provided more expertise. Parents joined in to provide food on evenings and weekends that the team worked; one parent helped immensely by building the crate needed to ship the robot when it was complete; other parents went on supply buying missions to Home Depot and various neighborhood hardware stores.

As a rookie team, there was more than enough work to keep team members and mentors busy. By the time of the NYC regional competition, 11 girls were on hand to drive the robot, repair it, scout other teams' performance, and talk to the judges. Double X was supported by classmates, friends, relatives and teachers who came from Brearley to cheer on the team. The team made adjustments to their robot in break periods, and both drivers and human players gained confidence with each new round. As the only all-girls team in the New York competition, the team was certainly noticed, but the successful performance of their robot was what allowed the team to be chosen to ally with a British team, Systemetric (Team 759), and one from Brooklyn Technical High School, Westinghouse Pirates (Team 354), in the final rounds.

At the final awards ceremony, Double X was awarded the Rookie Inspiration Award for bringing engineering to the attention of The Brearley School community. That success and the thrill of the competition itself has ensured that the team will continue to draw more interest from the Brearley, and now the Chapin, communities.


Previous Robots

B2X2
B2X2 was our rookie robot. She was designed to pick up a "tetra" and place it on one of the top goals of 2005's game, Triple Play. B2X2 won us the Rookie Inspiration Award in the NYC Regional of 2005. She competed in a quarter-finalist alliance with team 354 and 759. B2 stands for Brearley Bots and X2 stands for Double X.

Entropia
Entropia was the robot we entered in the 2006 Aim High competition. Entropia is the collaboration of Entropy- a measure of chaos within a system and utopia- an ideal or perfect place. Her name directly correlated with our motto: Out of chaos, perfection rises.

Nemesis
Nemesis was the robot we entered in the 2007 Rack n' Roll competition. She is named after Nemesis, the Greek goddess of retribution and the goddess who punishes hubris in mortals. She is an inspiration for Double X as an all girls team. She competed in a quarter-finalist alliance at the SBPLI regional.