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Diary of an Innovator: Team 23206 Season Wrap Up

2024-01-24: Diary of an Innovator: Team 23206 Season Wrap Up

Original Post: Diary of an Innovator: Team 23206 Season Wrap Up

What has been your biggest surprise from CENTERSTAGE? What will you take away from the experience?

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We had a great year competing in CENTERSTAGE and we thank you for coming on this amazing journey with us! As a rookie team competing with only four people, we were super excited to be an alliance captain in the Washington State Championship. We put in lots of hard work to complete our robot and compete in this season. This experience has developed our understanding of the different aspects of building and controlling a robot. Before this season began, we had little-to-no idea about how a robot truly worked. In the process of building one, we have gained an understanding of actuators and mechanisms (motors, servos, gears, etc.), sensors (encoders, distance) and how they all come together in the robot code. We’ve learned that we are all capable of building amazing things as long as we take the time to learn and experiment!

This experience has changed how we see technology and STEM careers. From the beginning, we all believed that we would pursue STEM related colleges, but during this year we’ve acquired a greater understanding of the many areas of STEM such as computer science (coding & AI), electrical & mechanical engineering, and how everything comes together in the robotics field. It has also helped refine our understanding of the engineering process, through designing, prototyping, and iterating.

We also had a lot of growth on how we work together. At the beginning of the season, we were just barely friends with each other. And now, after spending an entire year working on a robot together, we have learned so much about one another. Our approach to teamwork has shifted immensely from the start of the year. We’ve learned how to track our progress better, how to adapt to solve problems together, and we’ve become way more comfortable asking each other for help. This has made us more efficient and adept at tackling challenges as a team.

What is the best part of participating in FIRST Tech Challenge? What part of the experience is the most fun or most rewarding?

The best part of participating in FIRST Tech Challenge has to be attending competitions. Although stressful, competitions are what we enjoy the most. When we are competing, things can go wrong very easily. From learning about a lack of structural integrity in our claw, to having to replace and crimp broken wires just before our playoff matches, competitions always present something different for us. But beyond that, seeing our hard work come together is as rewarding as anything.

Reflecting on the season, what is the one lesson you’ll carry with you going forward?

A lesson we’ll take with us through the rest of our time in FIRST is the commitment we have to have throughout the season. Before competitions, we would meet almost every day of the week in preparation. And we learned that the more hours we put in, the more successful we would end up being in competitions. On one occasion we had over three hours of drive practice prior to the State Championship, it paid off in totality, as we won all of our matches leading up to the playoffs. We intend to continue putting in the time and effort next year.

How did you wrap up your season?

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Going into off-season we’ve begun to reach out to schools in our community. We’ve already presented to different classes across three elementary schools in our school district. We give them information about FIRST programs and then we demonstrate our robot from this year. All the schools we’ve visited have been super interested, and we intend to continue visiting these schools to help them start programs of their own.

Is your team planning to compete next season? What might you do differently next year?

We plan to continue competing in the next season of FIRST Tech Challenge as we enter high school. We are very excited to compete in next year’s challenge, INTO THE DEEP presented by RTX, and will hopefully have a season just as fulfilling as this one. We plan to stick to the same path we took this year, but with a few changes. We hope to increase the amount of outreach and collaboration we participate in, starting with the schools in our area. We also plan to explore ideas we didn’t get to compete with this season. For example, we want to get the chance to experiment with RoadRunner, construct a more agile robot, and improve our driving skills.