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This year’s LA robotics team was a real pleasure to teach. They are exceedingly bright students who brought a continuous stream of ideas and energy to the challenge and I am honored to know them.
The UCCS FLL robotics league contains a number of well funded large programs with significant infrastructure, support, and allocated time. Many use regular class time in school for their programs. Our team ran after school in the remains of the day, yet our students came out of most of those session happy and inspired.
Most of the robots I saw in action at the tournament did not incorporate sensor feedback to dynamically control their robot. Our students approached their robot solution with touch and light sensor feedback to control robot navigation. By doing so they learned several advanced robotic concepts that the majority of students at the tournament did not get into. Our team built and evaluated several chassis configurations over the 8 weeks of the challenge before settling on a preferred structure. They used multiple work groups in parallel for part of the season before merging into a single team robotic solution.
Our team’s research project took a bold position on very immediate humanitarian grounds that is at odds with the political orthodoxy of current government funding of ethanol fuel. I have a lot of respect for the teams’ choice of focus even though the importance of what they were promoting seemed to go right over the heads of a couple of their project judges.
In sum, the team chose a more difficult robot approach, a research project that challenged orthodoxy, their work product reflected the fruits of their own labors, and the students really got into it. F.I.R.S.T. stands for, “For Inspiration in Robotics, Science and Technology.” I believe our team fulfilled the best values promulgated by FLL and FIRST. Even though they did not bring home an award from this tournament, in my view, the content of what they brought to the tournament was excellent, and it will stand them in good stead in their future endeavors.
Brooks Imperial, Coach
