2007 Chairmans Submission:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. Briefly describe the impact of the FIRST program on team participants with special emphasis on the 2006/2007 year and the preceding two years. The entire team, mentors and students, has been significantly impacted by FIRST and the rapid learning curve all participants experience. In the beginning of this endeavor, the majority of the team had no direct experience related to robotics. However, they rose to the challenge and in six weeks learned what should have taken six months.
2. Examples of role model characteristics for other teams to emulate. The team's unique utilization of recent technology can be used to document the engineering process from initial conception to materialization of the final design so other teams can use our methods as a model. For documentation, we used some of the latest software ranging from Google Spreadsheets (to keep track of attendance) to a Wiki, a website clearinghouse which holds all the team's favorite websites and FIRST documents.
3. Describe the impact of the FIRST program on your team and community with special emphasis on the 2006/2007 year and the preceding two years. In order to promote the field of engineering to the younger generation of our community, we held an exhibition of our working robot at six elementary and middle schools, and we demonstrated first hand how engineering can be applied in solving daily tasks. We also provided contact information to teachers at all schools so that they can contact our team to come and teach the students about robotics and basic engineering concepts.
4. Team's innovative methods to spread the FIRST message. We have created a program called FIRST Austin to teach other teams what we have learned about the FIRST experience. We have also used FIRST Austin to facilitate the FIRST's goal of raising community awareness of the importance of engineering. When implemented properly, FIRST Austin will encourage other teams to create similar programs.
5. Describe the strength of your partnership with special emphasis on the 2006/2007 year and the preceding two years. The community welcomed and embraced our team by providing us with funding, mentors, and avenues with which we could spread the FIRST message. We feel that as our students become part of the same community that has supported and learned from us, they will continue to raise interest and awareness of engineering long after the competition has ended.
6. Team's communication methods and results. We used Google Documents and online mailing lists in order to keep everyone informed of important announcements and upcoming events. With these in place, the team had unlimited access to pertinent information and therefore was able to minimize the potential for miscommunication. As a result, we were able to complete our goals, which included finishing our robot early, enabling us to hold exhibitions and educate the community about FIRST's message.
7. Other matters of interest to the FIRST judges, if any. Unlike most rookie teams, we were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to work with several FIRST veterans, the UT student engineers. This model has served us better than the model of a lot of other rookie teams we have seen. Our mentors were always aware of what was required for FIRST so that everyone could work to their utmost potential without the burden of learning everything on our own.
FIRST IMPACT
When we were starting our robotics team, our mentors and students had a very rough time raising money, obtaining a facility and getting the proper tools. Despite all of these barriers, the team has been able to accumulate a wealth of knowledge that goes far beyond knowing the difference between an 8-32 and a 1/4-20 machine screw. The students and mentors have gained tremendous insight into the world of starting a successful team. The experience of starting an organization will stick with all of the students far more than would sending signals to a Victor or cutting aluminum on a miter saw.
With a fairly young mentoring squad, the students had to rise up into leadership in their rookie year, regardless of grade level in high school. Some of the students knew no one on the team before the team came together; the students just knew they really wanted to be part of FIRST. The robotics team first began with the Capitol BEST Robotics Competition. BEST gave the team a great primer session to discover the design process for robot building and the formula for team building. With BEST, the team started with a class of only seniors brought together by the teacher, John Sperry. The team overcame many hurdles in design, coordinating schedules and establishing a solid outreach program for others to also get involved with robotics competitions. The ausTIN CANs students and mentors learned through practice, scheduling and holding demonstration days at the UT-Austin Edison Lecture Series and giving presentations at six elementary and middle schools. Eventually the team membership forms reached over eighty students and Mr. Sperry's classroom was completely filled with students. That's when we realized we might need a larger facility and a lot more mentors.
There were only a couple months between the BEST and FIRST seasons and the team had a lot of pressure to get more members affiliated with FIRST, programming and CAD design before kickoff. The team held training sessions to introduce programming using Vex robotics kits and a six hour Autodesk Inventor training course at UT-Austin for all of the students on the team. The season quickly started and we had a rough time getting all the members to attend the kickoff due to academic conflicts; however, we found a projector and got the team together to watch the kickoff and decide on a overall schedule to determine what needed to be done in the six weeks to come. Interestingly enough, as the season progressed, we saw enthusiastic freshmen quickly fall into leadership positions due to dedication and willingness to learn the vast amount of FIRST material. By about the third week, we miraculously obtained a larger facility at Pickle Research Center just down the road from the high school. We were able to setup a full size practice course with a complete rack and tested the robot drive train which had been finished by the second week. Once we reached the 3 week milestone, the team had a much more secure feeling of design, FIRST terminology and troubleshooting skills.
ROLE MODEL
We hope that many other rookie teams can have the opportunity and support we had in building our team. In Austin, the only other team close enough to provide help was Team 418, LASA Robotics. They helped with part swaps and helpful emails but as far as finding dedicated mentors to help guide the team, we were on our own. We were able to find six engineering student mentors from the UT-Austin Robotics & Automation Society, most of whom had previous FIRST experience and provided the team with tools, helped with creating a website, and secured funding. Our team feels that more rookies should have an opportunity to have the same support from UT-Austin that our group received. Therefore, our group has established FIRST Austin (www.firstaustin.org) to help spread the word and assistance of UT-Austin to the surrounding Central Texas area. We hope to expand out to more Austin I.S.D. schools with VEX and FRC. We have established a contact network with fellow Austin I.S.D. schools through the Capitol BEST program. The greatest challenge for rookie teams will be funding. Our website shows many ways to raise money in Austin and provides samples of our grant applications and funding requests. Many of the UT-Austin mentors are willing and ready to assist other schools which we successfully demonstrated at McCallum and Crockett high school for BEST Robotics.
COMMUNICATING FIRST TO THE COMMUNITY
Besides many robot demonstrations at Anderson High School, our team has reached out to many elementary and middle schools including Hill Elementary, Davis Elementary, Kealing Middle School, Canyon Vista Middle School, Laurel Mountain Elementary, and Murchison Middle School. What really sets apart our rookie team from more experienced teams is the fact that we decided to interrupt our build season to take our robot for all of these numerous demonstrations. Also, because UT held one of the numerous FLL and JFLL competitions, we took advantage of this opportunity to conduct a demonstration of VEX robots to get the kids excited about what else is in store for them with regards to FIRST. We have also sent letters out to local state representatives for Dean's Homework. In the letters we discussed the opportunity of creating an extracurricular grant for high schools around Austin to fund;robotics and science related programs. Luckily we did receive a response from representative Donna Howard about her support for the FIRST program. However due to previous engagements she was not able to make our invitation to Lone Star Regional; more details are posted on forums.usfirst.org. The ausTIN CANs will continue to reach out to politicians here in Austin to eventually convince the state of the importance of FIRST Robotics.
INNOVATIVE FIRST MESSAGE
FIRST Austin is a ground breaking program that will help spread the FIRST involvement in many surrounding Austin high schools. Through the FIRST Austin program, we provide documents and logs of Anderson High School's debut as one of the more accomplished robotics teams in Austin. We feel that Anderson is one of the best model schools because the students had no prior robotics experience and no formal training in the use of tools or technology clubs, but we were able to rise above these hardships to accomplish more than anyone thought possible. Therefore, other schools can learn from Anderson's lessons and hopefully be guided by UT-Austin student mentors along the way. We feel that high school students can relate on a closer level to college student mentors, as opposed to seasoned engineers, since college students are more like fellow peers. In addition we hope our FIRST Austin site provides a unique perspective on how to raise money in the Austin area. Hopefully many parallels can be drawn to other cities and other programs involving universities and fellow high schools until it reaches a national scale.
This year our team held a Central Texas practice FIRST competition to prepare ourselves and other teams for the regional. For this to happen, we set up a full size carpeted course with a complete rack next to our build area. This year team 418 attended, and we had a great turnout from both teams. It was a great opportunity to see other ideas and practice with another robot to understand how to work as an alliance partner at competition. Specifically, figuring out the difficulty of climbing up onto another robot's ramp was put into practice. Combining with LASA also gave us a sense of teamwork and sportsmanship as we collaborated and conquered potential problems while having fun simultaneously. It was beneficial to trade electrical and build-related ideas as well as we critiqued one others robots.
YEAR ROUND PARTNERSHIP
Our year round partnership started when the team was formed for BEST Robotics. The teacher, John Sperry, the UT-Austin Student mentors and the students have become very close through the building weeks. More and more students are becoming aware of Anderson Robotics every day through community outreach, and many students go on to play an important role on the team. The relationship between the UT-Austin students and Anderson High School students will stay very strong especially when many of the graduating seniors become UT-Austin Students. Many of the freshmen parents have risen up as well to become major supporters of the team.
TRUE MEANING OF FIRST
To best understand the meaning of FIRST, we included a few comments from our fellow students and other teams. These students had very strong opinions on the impact and effect FIRST has created on their life and knowledge.
"FRC 2158, ausTIN CANs, put on a fun Central Texas Mini-Meet this past Saturday. 418 attended and had a blast. This rookie team is going to be one to watch develop - they have all the ingredients for a successful FIRST team, including a great attitude." - Jane Young (#0418 LASA Robotics/Purple Haze)
"The team is more like a family now, with the mentors as our big brothers and sisters. In essence, FIRST is rolling at Anderson and FIRST Austin will bring robotics to Austin for the first time with all the excitement it deserves." - Kapil Saxena
"Through this whole process we've become more than just friends; we've become a FIRST family. We think differently now. When each of us graduate we will take with us the experience and spirit of FIRST, list of critical features, teamwork, collaboration and ingenuity. To us FIRST is not a robotics competition, it's a philosophy" - Andrew Cimino
"FIRST was a pretty cool program since I got to do lots of things that I wouldn't normally do" - David Rich