Teen Summit Write-up

As you know, the Northshore High Robotics Team (a.k.a. Team Combustion) will be giving a workshop at the Back to School Summit and Lock-in Bash on August 29. We plan to begin the 50-minute workshop by showing a video approximately 10 minutes in length that introduces the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) against the backdrop of the Bayou Regional in New Orleans, where the teams compete. Another video of two actual matches from the Bayou Regional about 6 minutes long will be shown. We will then have an information session about 15 minutes long, where members of the team answer questions and give more details about FIRST and FRC, what it means to be part of the team, the build season, actually designing and building the robot, the appeal of FIRST, and so on. A 5-minute video will be shown about Autodesk Inventor, the computer-aided design software used in FIRST by some to help design the robot. Finally, we will split into the three sub-teams that make up the team: Controls (electrical controls, sensors, and programming), Chassis (the drive train and framework of the robot), and Challenge (the apparatus unique to each robot, like an robotic arm, gun, or sweeper). Each will allow students to interact and help build something to get an idea of what building a robotis actually like. The Controls team will show interested people the LabVIEW programming language used to operate the robot, the HTML programming which powers the team website, and also some basic wiring,such as crimping, cutting, and stripping wires. The Chassis and Challenge teams, due to the similar nature of their work in actually building the robot, will help kids construct a simple machine, such as a wheel with a metal frame made of precut 80/20 aluminum pieces, which is frequently used in FIRST.All of this will be under team supervision to ensure safety. Hopefully this will show the teenagers the fun of building the robot and the appeal of robotics. We will rehearse this workshop to see how long everything will take and plan accordingly. Hopefully by the end of the workshop they will leave with a new understanding of FIRST and an interest in something as beneficial as the FIRST Robotics Competition.

This summary was written by Sam H.