During this past Tuesday’s meeting, the girls talked about various updates and announcements involving the sub-teams, including goals, outreach events like the Romibo Project, and future events and programs. Another major thing that came up in the meeting is that this past meeting is the last preseason meeting before build season.
Brace yourselves, ladies!
As the girls on the team strive to learn and get things accomplished, they also work hard in their individual sub teams. Here are updates on the groups from the girls themselves!
“In the mechanical team we finished measuring and cutting the spaces and lining up the sprockets so the chain could be fitted, broken, and put on the chassis.”
-Grace Brueggman (mechanical team)
“The programming team split into small groups and each worked on a section of a swerve drive code. In the end the code was completed and the sections were put together.”
-Mackenzie Ferris (programming team)
“Wemilled and reamed holes and press fitted bushings and bearings into finished pieces on the mechanical swerve drive.”
-Laurel Donatelli (mechanical-chassis team)
“We discussed our format for presenting- skits, informative, gameshow, etc.“
-Campbell Konrad (Chairman’s Award)
“Chairman’s talked mainly about the Africa project whichis sending videos and pictures to kids in Africa in middle school.”
Lynn Urbina (Chairman’s Award)
At the last Girls of Steel preseason meeting on Tuesday, December 11, the girls decided on a top priority to focus on this upcoming season. The options were: maintaining a positive team culture, working to improve the FIRST community in Pittsburgh, and building a competitive robot. Chosen in a blind vote, the main focus decided upon was to build a competitive robot, although the other two options are still vital for the team. Now the girls are discussing specific achievable goals for each of the categories.
Current and Upcoming Outreach Events
THE ROMIBO PROJECT
The Romibo project, one of the GOS outreach programs, is a collaborative effort committed to building affordable robots to help with research in kids with mental disabilities. The girls involved in this learned how the Romibo-bot worked and then began assembling their own.
We have been asked to begin prototyping the next model of Romibo robots so that they are more efficient and effective, while still going easy on your wallet. In addition to putting the bots together, the girls learned valuable skills like soldering wires together and how to use a type of wire insulator called heat shrink (shrink wrap it’s one of those names), as well as team building by assigning everyone to different jobs so each girl had something to do. Everything was very hands on and educational. It helped the girls hone skills they may use during the build season this year. But the main thing is that we made progress in creating robots that will help scientists better understand mentally disabled children and find improved ways to communicate with them.
GIFT WRAPPING
Coming up, on December 23, a few of the girls will be gift wrapping at the Barnes and Noble at the Waterworks to help out before Christmas!