FIRST Robotics Team 1501, Huntington Indiana
Well our New Haven Canal Days parade was a success. Thanks to the Henline’s again for hauling all our robots all the way to New Haven. We did under estimate the size of the parade, there were tons of children that didn’t get candy from us. Fun fun times!
Come check us out in New Haven’s Canal Days Parade. We’ll be displaying all FIVE of our robots from the past seasons in the parade. One shiny sight to see!
Saturday, June 6th, Parade start time 11am. New Haven, Indiana.
4-H Link:
http://4hblogs.org/ccn/archives/2009/04/national-4h-cou-3.html#more
MANCHESTER, N.H. & CHEVY CHASE, Md.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–National 4-H Council today announced it is creating a new Alliance with FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) to reach new youth across the nation and expand existing 4-H robotics programs. This exciting new alliance, which will be announced and celebrated at the FIRST Championship on April 16-18 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, is designed to foster more opportunities for youth to explore science, engineering and technology (SET) careers by providing them with hands-on, team-based experiences through the designing, building and programming of robots.
Brought together by the shared pursuit of inspiring an appreciation of science and technology in young people throughout the nation, 4-H and FIRST will work together to promote scientific learning and the building of confidence and life skills among all K-12 youth. 4-H, through their One Million New Scientists. One Million New Ideas.TM campaign is working toward the goal to engage one million new young scientific thinkers by the year 2013.
“Research shows that children reach their full potential through a combination of involvement within families, schools and community,” said Donald T. Floyd, Jr., President and CEO, National 4-H Council. “Providing 4-H youth with opportunities like FIRST to participate in friendly and educational competitions allow us to foster team-building skills and heighten interest in exploring future careers in science, engineering and technology.”
There are nearly 400,000 4-H youth throughout the nation already participating in university research-based robotics and engineering programs with 4-H clubs in nearly every state currently participating in FIRST programs. In addition, five high-school level 4-H teams will be competing at the FIRST Championship this year.
“The global economy is constantly demanding a more technologically competent workforce, and the value of practical application experiences like those 4-H and FIRST provide is immeasurable,” said Paul R. Gudonis, FIRST President. “The FIRST, National 4-H Council Alliance will help both organizations to provide many more youth with the opportunity to experience FIRST and open up new horizons in science, technology, math and engineering.”
About National 4-H Council
4-H is a community of more than six million young people across America learning leadership, citizenship, and life skills. National 4-H Council is the private sector, non-profit partner of National 4-H Headquarters (USDA). The 4-H programs are implemented by the 106 Land-Grant Universities and the Cooperative Extension System through their 3,100 local Extension offices across the country. Learn more about 4‑H at www.4-H.org.
About FIRST
Inventor Dean Kamen founded FIRST in 1989 to inspire an appreciation of science and technology in young people, initiating robotics competitions in 1992. The Manchester, N.H. - based 501(c) (3) not-for-profit, designs accessible, innovative programs which build self-confidence, knowledge, and life skills while motivating young people to pursue opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). With assistance from 3,500 corporate sponsorships and 85,000 volunteers, FIRST organizes several competitions inspiring K-12 youth into STEM education and career exploration: FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) and FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) for high-school students, FIRST LEGO® League (FLL) for children 9-14 years old, and Junior FIRST LEGO® League (JFLL) for 6 to 9 year-olds. To learn more about FIRST, visit www.usfirst.org.
The 2009 Spring Family Festival was a fun event for us. It gave us a chance to learn about other community programs in Huntington County. We also tried to pass our information around that we could offer to help rebuild computers, make websites, or volunteer at the other community programs. Our team not only put on a demo for the festival, but learned a great deal about how our community really pulls together with really great nonprofit programs to better our community.
Check out all the photos here.
Congratulations Team 1501 on a great showing at the Boilermaker Regional!
Weekend summary for the sponsors and those that couldn’t be there with us - by Chris Elston
We arrived Thursday in hopes of playing a few practice matches but instead ran into some issue of our robot breaking the size constrains, so we struggled for most of the day trying to cut on our shooter to make it fit. With the new controls system, we also had problems communicating with the field right away which was quite a scare. Despite all the troubles on Thursday we got through it all and passed inspection around 5:30 pm ready to play on Friday morning.
Friday morning we played out the first three matches which netted us wins and put us in 1st place right away but then we had to turn around and play some “power house” teams which netted us three losses. We was awarded the Imagery Award on Friday night at Elliot Hall, an award we’ve been trying to win for four years. In the past Team 1024 from Indianapolis won this award, however our marketing crew and Harley’s help put us over the top with the golden wings in our pit that matches our team’s design and robot. The combination of all this won us the award.
Saturday morning seemed like a streak of bad luck, we played four more matches two of which our partner’s robots had some struggles and stopped. When that happens in this game, the disabled robot becomes a sitting duck and easy to score on netted our alliance an easy loss. All in all we finally seeded around 20th out of 35 robots. Our final record was 5 wins, 6 losses. During the alliance selection we was second round pick by Team 1720 and 111 Wildstangs. That was pretty exciting to be picked by the number 1 seeded team to play with them in the bracket rounds Team 1720 is a friend and a team we’ve grown close too over the years from Muncie, Indiana. Several of our students become Juniors and enroll at the Indiana Academy and join 1720 which seems like we are just one big team. We’ll never forgot that from Team 1720.
Elimination round 1 went pretty good with a win, but the 8th seed alliance captain’s robot let the magic smoke out and they called for a back up bot. When we went for round two we didn’t realize they had called a back up bot and caught us by surprise and dinged our strategy up pretty good, we lost round 2 because we wasn’t prepared for the change up. This lead us into a round 3 “rubber” match to decide the fate of our season, we changed up the placement of our robots and started the match very strong every thing worked liked planned but the 8th seeded team kept eating away at our big lead in the beginning of the match and they finally caught us when the clock hit zero. According to the real time scoring, it was 60 to 60 a tie, then there was a ball recount and we lost 60-62, I watched the video play back and a human player tossed a moon rock in the air when the clock hit zero which landed into a trailer and won them the match, amazing on their part….. Two points created the upset 8th seed defeated 1st seed for the weekend and we packed up and crated the robot.
After the matches where over, we went to Elliot Hall again and won a second award. The UL Safety Award. This is the second year in a row we’ve won this award. Our Safety Captain Gracie Fowler was really on top of it of this year once again and it shows. It’s very difficult to win the safety award at an event like this because so many teams are very safe and put together tough safety programs for their teams. Also unusual is winning TWO major awards in the same event quite an accomplishment. I’ve not seen this too many times in five years I’ve been apart of robotics.
All and all, we had one of the best robotics season I’ve ever recalled in just how the team worked like clockwork once again, even though we didn’t bring home the blue banner for 2009. Although our robot wasn’t the strongest robot at Purdue, but we adapted and tried to play “smart” with strategic plays that won us some rounds. There’s always next year.
Pictures and videos coming soon. There are a few snap shots in the photo pages on the website.
Thanks to all the team members, parents, sponsors and engineers.
