Yesterday we introduced you to FTC Team 3113: Some Disassembly Required, a team that has stuck out as a major competitor this FIRST competition season.
The team is currently competing at FIRST Championship with a robot designed for this year’s “Cascade Effect” challenge (which is essentially to create a robot that shoots as many wiffle balls into rolling goals around a field).
Nearly 30 percent of the FTC Team 3113’s robot was 3D printed, and we supplied our printing services to help the team print a battery hold, flat bracket, goal capture and motor mount out of ABS plastic on a Stratasys Dimension 768 SST for the final robot.
We asked the team to share about their experiences designing, building and competing with their robot in this two-part blog series.
Yesterday we learned how 3D printing and rapid prototyping played a role in the design process.
Today we’re hearing about lessons learned along the way and how community outreach and goodwill has changed the game in more than one way for the team.
You’ve been competing for quite some time now – at three Maryland qualifiers, a Pennsylvania qualifier, the State Championships for Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware, the FTC East Division regionals and now the FIRST Championship. What have you learned along the way?
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Much of what we learn at competitions regards our robot. We often find issues with our design at these competitions, and then work to innovate the designs after.
Competitions are the best chance to learn, and develop our robot more. Each competition we have found new issues with our designs, and almost eliminated the issues completely. Because of this, we have a consistent, robust, high scoring robot ready for further championship tournaments.
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In addition, we have experienced examples of how our outreach can come back to help us later on. We spend a lot of time helping other teams at the competitions. Donating parts, debugging code and robots, and attempting to make every teams experience a great one! We often find ourselves alliances with a team we had helped in the morning, and it serves to remind us that doing a good deed can come back to help you in the future. That’s good karma!
We also learned it’s very important to make good relationships. Many of the teams that have alliances with us, and won with us, are good friends of ours. We work very well with these teams, and as friends, so we love alliancing. We continue to learn that doing good deeds, and making friends, can help make others and ourselves successful.
What do you believe set your team apart from other competitors?
During our 2012 season, our team underwent a major change regarding our mission. Originally, and traditionally, as a robotics team we have the goal of designing and constructing an effective robot, while learning about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. We had discovered that there is something more important to us than building robots, it is helping others, reaching out, and building relationships.
During the 2013-2014 season, we raised over $20,000 in donations for various different programs that helped everyone from robotics team students, to peoples with disabilities. We believe that what sets us apart is our niche to reach out, and help thousands of people with tasks and challenges beyond just building robots. As a Boy Scout troop, we follow the “Do a good turn daily” ideal, and do our very best to help people from all around the world.
This season, we are working to found, fund, and operate a prospective non-profit organization called Thrive. The objective of Thrive is to find, fund, procure, and operate technology that has the ability to change people’s lives. The pilot project of this organization is the result of our hard work, and is almost complete. This project’s aim is to procure telepresence technology for the Easter Seals disability services.
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Telepresence robotics has the potential to change people’s lives, by enabling veterans, children, and elderly with disabilities to communicate better, transport more easily, visit loved ones, join the workforce, interact with doctors and psychiatrists, and more.
We have raised over $3,500 for the program, and hope to soon set up the system and research its use by the Easter Seals. We hope to be able to discover and share ways that telepresence technology can change, or even save the lives of people with disabilities.
Another major outreach program we are involved in is dedicating ourselves to sharing our knowledge with international FTC Teams. In our 7 years of being a team, we have made many mistakes, and learned a great deal about FIRST robotics. If we could pass on this knowledge to new and inexperienced teams, then their FIRST robotics experience could be all the better.
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We began by constructing a 40 page guide to FTC that covers everything from robot design and construction to outreach and teamwork. We then began working with international FTC directors on sharing the guide with teams from all over the world. It is hoped that the guide saves these teams a lot of stress, and can elevate the overall educational experience of the FIRST Robotics program around the world.
UPDATE: FTC Team 3113 averaged over 500 points per match at the FIRST Championship, ranking 53rd out of 128 teams at the competition, and over 4,000 teams worldwide.
FTC Team 3113: Some Disassembly Required Team Members include:
- Justin Argauer, 10th, River Hill High School: Driver 2, Build team
- Ryan Argauer, 7th, Folly Quarter Middle School: Safety Captain, Photographer, Quartermaster
- Eric Frank, River Hill High School Sophomore, Programmer
- Al Gronlund: Mentor
- Zack Gronlund, 9th, River Hill High School: Spirit Captain, Build team, Driver Coach, Gorilla
- Griffin Holt, 9th, Glenelg High School: Build team, Promote Captain, Judging, scouting captain
- Spencer Mullinix, 10th, Glenelg High School: Build team, technology outreach coordinator
- James Parry, 11th, Chapelgate Academy: Driver 1, Build team, Programming Captain, Co- Captain
- Connor Tinker, 11th, River Hill High School: Design Captain, Outreach coordinator, Judging captain, engineering documentation
- Miles Reidy: Assistant Mentor
- Jeremy Romano, 7th, Folly Quarter Middle School: Quartermaster, judging, scouting, build team
- Henry Soeken, 6th, Folly Quarter Middle School: Quartermaster, Pit design
- Mac Smith, 10th, River Hill High School: Programming, Electrical, Spirit
