The First Robotics Competition Team 171, The Cheese Curd Herd, is the longest running team in the state of Wisconsin. The Cheese Curd Herd was founded in 1995 and has competed every year since then in FRC. The team has 15 to 20 University of Wisconsin-Platteville students as mentors, and about 20 area high school students.

The main goal of Team 171 is to gather students from the local area and help them gain interest in STEM fields.

The FRC is an organisation that releases a game every year and hosts 63 regional competitions for teams to work together and compete in order to secure a position in the annual Nationals Tournament, which is held in Houston, Texas, and Detroit, Michigan. This year’s game was called “Destination: Deep Space!”

Two Alliances, with three teams in each alliance, race to install panels on their assigned rockets and cargo ship, load cargo and return to their base before a sand storm occurs (time runs out).

This year, The Cheese Curd Herd competed at two regional events, the Iowa Regional, located in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and the Seven Rivers Regional, held in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

At the Iowa Regional, Team 171 finished at Rank 27 out of the 48 teams there, with a record of 5-7-0, and at The Seven Rivers Regional, they finished Rank 12 out of the 54 teams with a record of 7-5-0. They made it to the first round of the Quarterfinals, but were eliminated in the second match.

During the team’s 24 years, they have accumulated 3 regionals wins, and numerous awards from Xerox, Johnson & Johnson, Motorola, General Motors and Rockwell Automation.

When the team is not competing, they conduct public appearances with their robot in the community. Demos are held for the UW- Board of Regents, UW-Platteville’s Engineering Expo, local high schools, parades and businesses.