HANNOVER MESSE

Our Germany Updates

DAY ONE

After months of anticipation for this trip, the day finally came. We reached the airport and got through security around 2:00 PM. The flight there was around 8 hours, but it was well spent. We played trivia games, watched new movie releases, and talked with each other. After 8 hours of sitting, we arrived and went through Frankfurt airport, we caught our train and admired the beautiful scenery Germany had to offer until we reached our hotel. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and exploring before the convention started. We passed the time with giant chess, exploring Hannover, and eating delicious food.

DAY TWO

The goal of day two was to go to the Messe before the opening ceremony and make alterations to our booth and check up on Goalie. When we got to our booth it looked out of this world, everything looked perfect! But of course, there were things to be changed, set, and fixed. We spent the complete day setting up and getting over problems Goalia was having involving the different environment. While this was going on people were coming up to us talking about how cool this was, how we made it, and the amount of support that we got there was so welcoming. While doing that we met the CEO of Ngen, Jason Myers! he was blown away by what we did and was excited for us to be fully set up to take a shot on Goalia. While there, we met Ministers, vendors, and the people in charge of the German Chancellors' rounds! At some point, we realized we needed water so a group of us went to the local store and got blown away by the variety of different things available, so blown away we split up and spent two hours in there. We finished the day by going out to eat dinner at the hotel restaurant.

DAY THREE

We finished setting up our booth. During the day, some people were interested in the robot, so the team got practice discussing and interacting with attendees. After a good day in Hall 7, we had the special opportunity to witness the Hannover Messe opening ceremony. The team loved it. There were amazing musical and dance acts, and the speeches were also insightful. It was a long and tiring night so we went right back to the hotel and ordered some pizza for dinner.

DAY FOUR

This was the day we met the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz. It was a surreal experience for the team, especially for Lochlynn and Ian who got to speak to him. He also played against the goalie. Check out our Instagram page for more pictures and the video of Scholz playing against Goalia. Hannover Messe has officially started today. The team was good at handling the many crowds that formed around the booth. Goalia had some issues today but it was nothing that teamwork couldn’t fix. The team also got a tour of the Festo booth and got to learn about the innovations of pneumatics.

DAY FIVE

We have continued strong with both the robot and the convention. The crowds of people coming to see the robot were non-stop. The team got to meet other teenagers that were there on a school trip. We also got to meet really important people and things alike as we were staffing the booth. We got to explore the many other booths during our breaks, and got a lot of swag!

DAY SIX

Four people from the our team got to visit a local school in Hannover, Schillerschule Hannover. In the school they got to meet students involved with the First Robotics Lego League and talk to them about how and what the First Robotics Competitions are. While that was happening, the other six students had the heads of universities interact with the booth, and were interested in their build of Goalia . In the afternoon, we were back together and went to Canada Club which is a Canadian themed cabin in Hall 17.

Happy Birthday to Mr. Haas who we celebrated with dessert after dinner.

HOW WE GOT HERE

Team 7200 has always been involved with the community, with us visiting Elementary schools to promote STEM with our robots. The Simcoe County Theatre Festival in Barrie requested us to build a dancing robot for their show, our robot stole the show! Our robot than caught the attention of TSN producers who challenged students in the FIRST Robotics program to create a robot goalie. in two months time we created our first version of Goalia, a goalie robot who was able to make saves all by itself. Goalia was so popular TSN asked if they could feature Goalia to showcase it.

GOALIA

Before

After

Thanks to NGen, we get to attend Hannover Messe, a stunning trade show that showcases new technological innovations and the latest technologies from all over the world.

WHERE

WHY

The CEO of a specialised manufacturing and tech company called NGen, Jayson Myers, contacted Banting Memorial High School. He called to make the offer of a lifetime. Jayson Myers offered Banting 7200 the chance to represent Canada in Hannover Messe with our most Canadian robot. Our Hockey robot, Goalia, and the team will be going to Germany in March 2025.