We were invited by Titanium Allies, FTC #10272, to demo our robot to a group of cub scouts along with FLL team BERSERK. We let the cub scouts drive our robot on a simple course. Most of the boys had fun driving the robot and enjoyed receiving their robot drivers license. It was a good way to let younger people know about FIRST.
We initially went to Conquest engineering to get some parts cut for our robot but ended up getting a tour as well. We walked around the big warehouse area of the Conquest Engineering building and saw many different machines, custom-made parts, and we got to be introduced to the many workers at Conquest. The whole tour took about an hour. This was a fun and educational experience and we hope to go back in the future.
One day during the building process of the lander we discovered we needed some metal pipes threaded. So, we went to a local engineering company called Conquest Engineering. There, they showed us how to tap the pipes and then we got to do it ourselves. They took us into the machine shop and we got to use their tapping machine. We tapped all eight of the pipes we need. They were really nice and we hope that they will be sponsors in the future.
Five members of our team went to the Chippewa Welcome Back Night to inform students and parents that FLL season is coming soon. We, along with the Brickstormers, did the demos. There were many people who were interested in FLL, we even got people to sign up. We started off by demonstrating our FLL robot and research project from the previous year. Then the Brickstormers demonstrated there magnificent robot, while we continued to show off our project.
It was fun talking to the people who were interested in FLL, we even got to talk to people who are or were on an FLL team. Many people came to the FLL table to ask questions about FLL. At the demo, I got to represent my old FLL team, Team Coding Queens. Even though we don’t FLL anymore, it was still fun to help out, it makes me look back on how I’m here in the first place.
Five members of our team went to demo at a Stratasys’ company picnic to display our FLL robot and project. We were there with many FTC teams demoing their robots. We talked to almost a hundred Stratasys employees about FIRST and kids in STEM. Everyone was very interested in our research project, DripDrop, and liked to see the different design iterations of the case including the final design printed by Stratasys using polyjet technology.
It was cool to talk to some of the employees of our sponsor company and see what they thought of FIRST programs. Another neat part was getting to meet and interact with the FTC teams since we are a rookie FTC team now.
Five members of our team went to the Slice of Shoreview to show off our robot and project for one of the last times. There was a tent for each FIRST programs there, and we all were demoing for the people that visited our corner of the Slice. On the day we went, we were the only FLL team in attendance. There were two FRC teams and many FTC teams. Over the four hours, we talked to about 87 adults and 97 kids. A lot of people were interested in FLL, which was great.
It was awesome to see so many people interested in the program, and I liked watching the FRC robots, which were right across the path from us. It would be awesome to go again next year, especially because we would be demoing an FTC robot next year.