Welcome to the 2019-2020 season of FIRST! We started off our 10th season in FIRST on September 15th with a Boot Camp for our FTC girls. The FTC girls are all new to FTC so the boot camp is designed for them to get to know each other while learning to use the robotics kits to build a simple push-bot robot chassis. For Girls of Steel, the FTC program is for 8th and 9th grade girls who want to learn about what it’s like to be on a robotics team before joining FRC the following year.
We hosted an orientation meeting on September 17th for all the new girls and their families. We introduced ourselves to the new families, shared information about what to expect at meetings and events, and then the girls went on a tour and played an ice breaker game, while parents learned even more about our program.
Girls of steel has had a great start for our preseason. The first all hands meeting, on September 24th, where we all group together (FRC and FTC girls and our mentors) and learn what is happening on different areas of the team, went fantastic. After the all hands meeting, the girls went on a scavenger hunt in small groups, finding the important places we should know on CMU’s campus. The girls had a blast on the hunt and everyone got to know each other. After the scavenger hunt and a team picture, the girls split into FRC and FTC. The FRC girls then split into their business subteams. Check out the Girls of Steel team structure here.
The awards subteam, led by Maya, started by reading awards submissions written by other FRC teams in years past to find the strengths and weaknesses in their own writing. This is a brilliant way of finding new ways to improve our submissions and to learn from our past mistakes. They reviewed short and long answer prompts to prepare for the different kinds of awards, and are beginning to strategize as they plan to write outlines in their next meeting. Their goals include having a complete file with drafts of all the awards and strategies to prepare for pit judging during competition.
The finance team, led by Vivian, began their first meeting by discussing the team’s budget, including ways to manage expenses and brainstorming ways to incentivize and promote student-led fundraising. They also planned on a way to present the budget to the team at a recent all hands meeting (on October 8th). Their current goal is to go over the different tasks that need to be done and have girls choose tasks and then submit an interest form. Separate groups of girls went over fundraising, budget, the prior Business Plan, and the Sponsor Letter.
The video subteam, co-led by Janise and Meghna, discussed the chairman’s video – the video each FRC team makes for their chairman’s award submission, and the layout for this year’s crowdfunding video. Next, the video team had an exciting meeting with guest speakers from the professional video team at the Institute for Software Research (ISR) at CMU to demonstrate how they use lights and cameras in their process. Check out last year’s chairman’s video!
The inclusion subteam, our newest subteam, led by Jimin, started matching people for the new big sister – little sister program. This year, they are also hoping to start an exchange program with FTC and FRC girls to switch through subteams to understand more of what they want to do on the team. Lastly, they are planning team bonding events, a potluck, and an anonymous suggestion box. The pairs of bigs and littles are part of a new program for encouraging inter-team bonding experiences.
On Media, co-led by Swathi and Abbey, the girls discussed the graphic design and social media tools that they use. The team went through the list of tasks that they have and assigned girls to them. They are working on updating the Girls of Steel website and created schedules for social media posting. Girls started learning how to use Canva for designing and created a thank-you card to give to sponsors. The team also started to review the branding guidelines of the team that state the types of fonts and colors we use in our media.
On the technical side, all the girls experienced taste-tester activities in the various technical subteams. The programming subteam started by training the new girls on robot function and how to map buttons with code. The taste tester demonstrated how they use Oi, VS Code, and Github. The programming team also demonstrated how to use the drivers station.
The Design team showed the girls how to use Solidworks to design cubes with circles in them, prototypes of a collector arm, and went through geometry and several Solidworks tutorials.
The mechanical team’s taste testers consist of a demonstration of how to use the tools, and building a robot chassis using our chassis kit project.
Lastly, the electronics team went through the function of the e-board, the best practices for safety, and the girls got some practice crimping wires.
Safety is important, so every girl goes to shop safety training as part of the Thursday technical training meetings.
The Girls of Steel FTC teams (pictured in the front row of the group photo above) – Hypatia, Hopper, and Lovelace – have started off the SKYSTONE season by learning about the theme of the competition this year. They also learned about the engineering notebooks, Slack, Google accounts, and basic fundamentals of robotics. Currently they are working on slides to present to show their progress at the next all hands meeting! Their first event is a scrimmage on November 23th at North Catholic High School! Our FTC liaison, Aditi, has been doing a great job of communicating with the FTC girls. The FTC teams have also been very busy with their chassis. They decided on the mechanisms they want to use on the SKYSTONE robots as well as the types of wheels and frame for their chassis. Lastly, they used the pushbot they assembled at boot camp to shape their ideas for the future robot and brainstormed new ideas for competition.
Last but not least, we had a great time shooting a segment of Tech Takeover for PBS!
More updates coming soon!