Broncobots Blog

This year, the team adopted two families from Meadow Lane Elementary School, which has become a yearly tradition for the Broncobots, and provided Christmas gifts for them. The families made Christmas lists and the team members donated items on the list for the families.

On November 5^th and 6^th, the Broncobots competed at the CowTown Throwdown, a competition held at the Cerner campus. Robots competed in Breakaway, last year’s game. The team participated in practice matches on day one and qualifying and final matches on day two. The team made semi-finals, but fell out after they competed in the semi-finals.

 The team participated at the Safe Halloween event hosted at Lee’s Summit North on October 31st. The team passed out candy to trick-or-treaters. One of the team members dressed up as a robot.

One of the team members hosted a bonfire at their house on October 29th for all the team members. It was a chance for the old team members to get to know the newer team members.

 The team took the 2010 robot to the Hazel Grove Carnival on October 15^th. The team demonstrated the robot to students at the carnival and let them make buttons.

The team took their robot to Oktoberfest on September 25^th and demonstrated the robot’s kicker and talked and answered questions about the robot. During other times throughout the day, Team Driven from Lee’s Summit High School and Team Titanium from Lee’s Summit West presented theirs robot as well.

The team demonstrated last year’s robot to spectators at the Overland Park Balloon Fest on September 18th. The team also explained FIRST and the team’s mission to people.

The team took last year’s robot to present it to the Missouri Chamber of Commerce on September 17th. The team presented and explained the different aspects of the robot. Two other teams were there: Team 1730, Team Driven from Lee’s Summit and Team 1986, Team Titanium from Lee’s Summit West. All three teams spoke about different aspects of FIRST and each Lee’s Summit team.

 For the Lee’s Summit North Homecoming parade on September 16^th, the team created a float on a trailer. Two team members, Dan and Colton, dressed up as robots and danced to techno music with lightsabers. The team handed out candy at the parade as well. 

 On August 16^th, Team 1987 took their robot from Breakaway to the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, MO. The team competed in a small off-season competition there.

After having been involved for the first four years, we, Emma, Tom, and Becky, thought it important to document the things Team 1987 faced, overcame, and accomplished. Because we were at every meeting, volunteer event, presentation, build day, or competition event, we believe that our memories, combined with all the wonderful photographs taken by Lisa Smith (and others) should be shared. We chose to do so by writing this book.

It has 118 pages with around 520 photographs and it highlights each build season and the subsequent competition events. Also included are all the submitted documents that took us to the Championship in Atlanta three years in a row.

This book tells the story of what it takes to be a humble and very successful FIRST® team.

We did a bulk order through emails already. If you responded/paid, we have accounted for your order. So far, we ordered 24 books which should be here in a few weeks. If you didn’t respond to us and would like to buy one, you can buy one online. Here is the Blurb bookstore preview and order website: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/1030061/3d956800543b3f2a9fb4bf27e5daf8a8

We are very excited to finally publish this book. We have been working on it for many weeks. Going through pictures to choose the perfect shots as well as following our progress in words took hundreds of hours, and we feel it is a great representation of Team 1987’s first four years. If there are any questions about the book, please email: thand@kc.rr.com.

We hope you enjoy it. To see the first 15 pages of the book, go to the link above.

This is my last work as a Broncobot. It has been an honor since the start!!

We got to give a presentation and talk to many employees at a local business. Thank you so much for having us, and we look forward to working more with you all.

Summit Robotics featured in LS Joural Online (right now, hard copy should come out soon)
http://www.lsjournal.com/100/story/23391.html

Thursday, Jan. 08, 2009
Friendly Robots in Lee’s Summit
Paulena Blalock, the Journal Staff
FIRST Robotics Competition

The three Lee’s Summit High Schools are participating in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition for Science and Technology) international robotic competition.

FIRST launched its 18th annual robotics competition Jan. 3.

The three high school teams held a fundraiser Jan. 3 at Lee’s Summit North High School prior to watching the international NASA broadcast that introduced the students, coaches and sponsors to what this year’s game would entail. Chris Cakes served pancakes and sausage to those who attended and the profits from the breakfast were divided three ways to support the teams to allow them to compete in the robotics competition.

“With the three school teams working on their own and together, it’s probably the most rewarding experience for the students,” said Becky Hand, a junior at Lee’s Summit North. “Unlike sports, we work together with our competitors to help everyone to compete.”

“One of the goals of FIRST is gracious professionalism,” said Tom Reynolds, a robotics coach at Lee’s Summit North. “It’s about helping each other out, including competition and your teammates,”

The FIRST Robotics Competition will reach more than 42,000 high school students with about 1,700 teams from the United States, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Germany, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Turkey and the United Kingdom, competing at 40 regional competitions worldwide.

Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway, Human Transporter, founded the FIRST Robotics Competition in 1989. According to the FIRST Web site Kamen wanted to find a way to inspire an appreciation of science, engineering and technology in teenagers. The vision for FIRST is to “transform the culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated.”

The not-for-profit public charity designs programs that motivate young people to pursue education and career opportunities in the science field.

“It’s a life changing event for many students,” said Lynn Griffiths, LSN robotics coach. “After participating in the competition, many of the students decide that they want to go on and major in engineering either at The Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla or at the University of Missouri-Columbia.”

“The program is a really great experience,” said Emily Griffiths, a junior at LSHS. “It’s not just about building robots. We have writers who work with public relations. We have engineers that design and build the robots. The kids also have the opportunity to work with animation.”

The live NASA broadcast of the robotics kick-off was shown in the LSN Performing Arts Center soon after the fundraising breakfast. The broadcast from Manchester, N.H., was shown across the nation, Canada and in Israel. The broadcast, shown at 52 kickoff sites, offered workshops and allowed for the teams to learn about this year’s competition titled “Lunacy.” Teams also received their kit of parts on that day, which included motors, wheels, batteries, a control system and a mix of automation components. There were, however, no instructions.

“We were given certain parts to use for the competition,” said Jim Nazworthy, a coach at Lee’s Summit High School. “However, it’s the design and building that is customized by the students.”

The game, “Lunacy,” is a competition between three teams to get as many “moon rocks” and “super cells” into the opposing team’s trailer. A human player, known as the “payload specialist,” controls the robot via a wireless control. The robots are designed to pick up nine-inch game balls and score them in trailers hitched to their opponents’ robots for points during the two-minute- and- 15- second match. Additional points are awarded for scoring a special game ball, the Super Cell, in the opponents’ trailers during the last 20 seconds of the match.

There is a maximum of 24 semi-final teams. The top five are guaranteed to move on to the Chairman’s Award competition in Atlanta.

“Generally, the competition is so high stressed,” said Tyler Nunemaker, a senior at Lee’s Summit West. “Yet everyone works together to fix the robot, even if it is the competitor’s robot, to make sure it’s in tip-top shape for competition.”

Students have six weeks to design and build their robot, which must be completed by Feb.17. The first week, the teams brainstorm the design of the robot.

The students receive guidance from their coaches and mentors who volunteer their time to help plan, design and build the robots. Mentors come from many of the Kansas City area’s engineering companies.

“It’s not a typical mentor and student relationship that the students will have,” Nazworthy said. “The mentor has in mind what needs to be done for the robot. It’s difficult to find an immediate solution and no one knows how to solve the problem. So the kids learn from the mentors what to do when you don’t know how to fix a problem immediately.”

According to Tom Hand, robotics coach for LSN, Honeywell, an engineering company, is one of the largest providers of mentors for the robotics program in the Kansas City region. They have between 60 to 75 employees who volunteer at the high schools that compete.

“Honeywell tries to find as many teams as possible for the employees to help out,” Hand said. “On Fridays, the mentors and coaches bring in our lunch and go into a conference room and share ideas and feedback off of one another.”

“My wife is now a robot widow for the next six weeks. I’ll go to work, come home, change clothes and go back out to help build the robot,” said Red Brown, coach of the robotics team for LSHS. “We have meals furnished for the kids and volunteers each night.”

Each of the high schools has a goal to raise funds to help pay for the students to travel to their regional competitions. Some of the fundraisers the students have done, besides the pancake breakfast, were yard work during the fall season and hosting a Robotics League camp for younger students.

The schools have received much sponsorship from local business. However, materials and travel expenses add up for the students.

“The teams are all in need of corporate sponsors. This is not a cheap event,” Nazworth said. “It’s $6,000 to register for a region. Teams are able to spend up to $3,500 extra on their robots.”

“The purpose of FIRST Robotics Competition is to help kids get interested in math and science making contact info and learning to make presentations to CEOs of a major corporation,” Hand said.

For more information about the FIRST Robotics Competition, visit the Web sites, www.usfirst.org and www.kcfirst.org.”

Week One general pictures

Watch for week one’s video coming up soon!

PS: Thank you to EMMA for taking notes and being a mentor too, I forgot her on the list of thanks last post.

We had members of our team, including new members, along with our robot at the Mason Elementary Carnival yesterday. If you didn’t see us, we were between a clown and moon bounce. After a few successful shoots, the launcher started to overdrive, so let’s hope it was due to the low battery and low air pressure! A few more pictures will be coming soon. Thank you for everyone who stopped by, along with the team members who came.

We were excited.