It’s been a busy competition season! Our chairman’s team presented on March 14th and all three FIRST at Home challenge teams finished their projects and judging occurred for all teams the week of March 22nd. Read our other competition season blog post here for a review of each at home challenge. Each team did a fantastic job! Here are a few words from each project lead about wrapping up competition season.
Chairman’s Team
During competition season, a team of 5 students created our presentation for FIRST’s Chairman’s Award! They wrote and memorized a script, created a visual aid, and prepared for judging questions. They presented to judges on March 14th and are excited to hear the results at the Upper Ohio Region FRC Awards Ceremony in May! Our amazing presenters are pictured below.
INFINITE RECHARGE at Home
We continued to work on the design of the robot, and we created a presentation and flyer to present our robot to judges. The presentation walked through the overall design and subsystems of the robot, the design process of the robot, and looked closer at the design of the shooter mechanisms. The flyer gave information about the robot, similar to what we normally hand out at competitions.
Game Design Challenge
The Game Design Challenge team refined their game, AppleMania, and created their submission, which involved a game overview, a description of field elements, and a description of robot actions. Part of our refinements involved making additions to the CAD of our tree, the central location from which game pieces are distributed. We also completed our field CAD (pictured below) allowing us to better conceptualize the flow of our game, and add to our presentation.
FIRST Innovation Challenge
Moving forward with the Innovation Challenge project, Girls of Steel has had the opportunity to meet with experts and make improvements to the BuzzBand, our vibrating device. We completed the first round of prototyping for the BuzzBand, applied for and received a provisional patent, gauged interest and potential participants for BuzzBand testing, began a research protocol, and began applying for a grant. We also had the opportunity to present our pitch and uninterrupted presentation to a group of interested people, including Bridget, our former FLL mentor, Girls of Steel mentors, special needs teachers, and other professionals before presenting for the Innovation Challenge judges!
While we are are waiting to hear the competition results, we are still working hard. Our members have ideas about how we can create a start-up, design a web site, and begin planning the preparations for our grant application for the MIT-Lemelson InvenTeams program. We will hear about both the competition and the grant application by the end of April.
