On January 25th, Pearce and I (Marco) went to Connect2STEM. It was a very STEM focused event, and also appealed to a younger audience, which worked in our favor since PromoBot dispenses candy. During the event we were approached by the D-Backs’ STEM coordinators, who invited us to their own STEM event that they are inviting a bunch of robotics teams to promote STEM in baseball. Overall, the event was an extremely fun and interesting event, in which we were able to talk to many kids and parents, and I feel we made an impact on the people we talked to.
Ahmed and I(Marco) are the ones that volunteered for an event called Go Baby Go which is a nonprofit committed to helping toddlers that aren’t able to walk due to a disability and modify toy cars to be able to be used by them and to let them have fun and develop their brains. Our role in this was modifying the cars to be able to fit the kids and to be comfortable and easy to use.
The Panther Robotics Team all went to Gilbert Christian High School and met with the two teams. The programming and builders discussed our robot’s parts and the code they used for autonomous. The Knight’s robot wasn’t working at first and both teams helped them fix it, unfortunately it still didn’t work . Afterwards our builders started tightening the screws so the robot wouldn’t fall apart while our programmers improved the code they already made. Meanwhile our Outreach member, Pearce, was working on our new brochures for this 2019-2020 year. After, all 3 teams started comparing their robots. After a few hours of working we said bye to the teams.
When comparing the robots, we figured out we all used mecanum wheels, also known as omni wheels, for our robots. These wheels let the robot move sideways with minimum friction making it as easy as moving forward.
As we were in the event, our programmers learned from the other teams a few things about how to build robots. Our lead programmer, Cameron, says that he learned that, “In autonomous we could use the gyroscope in the hub to tell which direction the robot is facing and rotate according to were the robot is located. Also we talked about distance sensors in order to find the building stage and move it to the building zone.” which helped them know more about how some hardware worked.
“We were talking about the capstone detailed designs”
Mr.Robert helped the Robosapiens team by teaching Nick from that team on how to use the stake machine
All of the members pitched in on ideas for this entry
Thank you Knights for having us!
Also, Ahmed found donuts with sprinkles shaped like D’s which is oh so important.
The Paragon Panthers Promobot is on the road again. This time we introduced FIRST to FABU America, a startup located in Tempe, Arizona; our coach joined this company recently. Two other employees know the FIRST Inspires program due to their kids participating in FLL and FRC. FABU is creating a new SoC for object detection for self driving cars to support autonomous driving. Everybody like driving the promobot and have various questions about the bot including material cost and build time. The employees liked the sturdiness and were impressed by the construction quality of this robot. The upgraded wheels are doing very well on solid surface but struggle on carpet especially with turning.
The SEMA Foundation, a Turkish organization and cultural center, hosted a Turkish festival. Handmade food, fashion, and goods were available at the festival. Music, games, and dances was also performed by the children of the SEMA foundation. The Festival was held at their center all day, and they had a large turnout of people, many of whom were families.
The inside portion of the festival, where most merchandise was being sold.
We were able to take the Promobot (along with traditional Turkish candies) and display it to the visitors and participants in the festival. Promobot was very popular especially with the kids in the crowd, many of whom were excited and asked about the construction of the robot, and how many candies were inside.
We also made a point to talk about FIRST with the parents who were watching, and inform them about the STEM opportunities that FIRST provides to our communities and how their kids can be a part of it. Many of the parents were interested and asked if FIRST was available at their child’s school and if not, how they could get them signed up for a community FLL or FTC team.
Helping Hand Relief and Development is a nonprofit organization that works worldwide to provide humanitarian aid to less fortunate people in countries afflicted by war, natural disasters, or famine. Helping Hand works with local communities to pack donated clothes, food, and supplies, and ship large containers to these countries to be distributed.
We volunteered with the organization Helping Hand for Relief and Development, where we assisted in loading a container for Somalia while representing FIRST. In this effort our goal was to aid the struggling groups that are in the global community under the banner of FIRST.
We wanted to show that FIRST goes beyond the robot and the field and that benefiting the community, both global and local is an important aspect of STEM. After a brief introduction, we began to work, loading boxes of supplies into a container that would be heading to Somalia. After volunteering we showcased our Promobot.
During this we spoke to many of the attendees and volunteers about FIRST and our Promobot. We were able to teach many of the volunteers and attendees about FIRST and we got the opportunity to talk about Promobot and our competing robot.
This was overall a very fun experience where we got to not only support a cause that would benefit the global community, but we were also able to inform people about FIRST and what it represents.
