The world champion Brighton High School Robotics team, known as the “TechnoDogs”, will be recognized at a special Shining Star ceremony Monday, prior to the Brighton Area Schools Board of Education meeting.

The event honoring the budding young engineers and scientists will take place at the Center for the Performing Arts at Brighton High School, beginning at 5:30 p.m. According to Superintendent Greg Gray, the motivation behind the event is to recognize the TechnoDogs robotics team, its coaches and mentors, for their outstanding achievement. The coach of the TechnoDogs is Rocky Roberts, who heads the BHS Automotive Technology program. There are about 100 members of the varsity and JV Robotics program, although some will not be able to attend because of vacation schedules.

In April, the TechnoDogs won the world championship in the FIRST World Robotics Championship at the Cobo Center and Ford Field in Detroit. FIRST is an acronym which means “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology”. In the FIRST Robotics competition, high school teams use sophisticated technology to build and code industrial-size robots and engage teams from other schools in various field games designed to test their robotics skills and creative solutions to problems. The BHS TechnoDogs team was the lead team in the Darwin Division, which was combined with three other teams in an alliance composed of SCH Vulcan Robotics from Philadelphia, the ThunderChickens from Sterling Heights and Team Rembrandt from Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

At the ceremony Monday, Superintendent Greg Gray will provide opening remarks and will hand out the Shining Star certificates to team members, followed by comments by Board of Education President Andy Burchfield. The team captains will then give a presentation on the successful season and show a video highlighting the season and the team’s accomplishment at winning the world title. After the presentation ceremony the board will adjourn and go to the BECC building at E. Main and Church streets for the main portion of the board of education meeting at 7pm. (TT)