Community Service is a cornerstone of Team 1501. Our community gives us so much through sponsorships, materials and mentors that it’s only right for us to give back. In some cases this means giving local children a chance to experience science and technology, in others it means showing the community how innovation in technology can be important to our society. And sometimes it just means spending a Saturday cleaning up a highway to show we care about our community.
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The Huntington City Police Department approached our team a year ago, asking if they could use one of our old robots for a moving target. We love our robots, so we answered no. We did them one better—we built them their own robot specifically for the purpose of target practice. After a few meetings with the police discussing specs, we put together a proposed budget of $2,300 and submitted for a grant offered by United REMC. The executive board requested to meet with us, and they unanimously approved funding for the project. We immediately got started on this student-led, summer project, with two underclassmen leading the way. After three months of brainstorming, designing, building, and programming, we produced a finished robot. This project allowed us to use building techniques, materials, and design processes that we don’t normally have the chance to employ. It also built leadership in students that would become our 2010 season officers.
"Fred" as the police named the robot, is designed to be easy to use, easy to charge, and to hold up to the rigor of being a target. Its movements mimic those of a real person, and will help reaction times in the field. To celebrate Fred’s creation, we held an open house for the police and the community. This open house attracted the attention of three newspapers, both of our local news stations, and our city’s mayor United REMC featured an article on our team in their newsletter, and because our project came in under-budget, they allowed us to use the leftover money for our build season. All of that being said, none of the media coverage meant as much as the recognition we received from the community. Because our team is rather small and frequently overshadowed by athletics, this project made Huntington County 4-H Robotics recognizable in our area.
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On Friday, February 12, 2010, members of the marketing team met at Huntington University. We hosted the CyberGirl badge for Junior Girl Scouts from troop 20279. We introduced ourselves and First Robotics. We explained what we do and a bit on how we do it. Then we got started. We first showed them a few websites, including NASA, and told them to explore. They rated the web sites according to how easy it was to find things, and other criteria. Next they found out what was happening in Girl Scouts around the world. After that, the girls interviewed Sondra Fowler about her job as a graphic designer and how it was connected to robotics. She helped the girls understand a few other jobs that sometimes include working on the Web. Close to the end, we let them loose on a few safe online games. We gave them the opportunity to also explore the Huntington Robotics website. This website includes FRC and FLL. These girls are in the age group for FLL. At the end of the night, the girls said they had a lot of fun and that they learned a lot.
Written by a student, Henry Easley
FIRST Lego League held its tenth annual Indiana state championship on Saturday, December 12th. Huntington’s participant (3669 Thunderbirds) went to IPFW in Fort Wayne for the state competition.
This team is different from the 1501 Thrust team because everything must be made of Legos. This team is made up of carefully selected middle school students and this was the first attempt for this kind of competition for Huntington County. The 48 teams attending Saturday’s competition had previously participated in regional qualifying events.
The Thunderbirds placed 13th in the performance part of the competition and second in teamwork and did well overall. For this competition you must program the robot to do “missions” to get points. Teams scored in four categories. In addition to performance and teamwork, there are awards for robot design and project.
Our project had to be about transportation. The problem we identified as an accident caused by driver distraction. We interviewed people from the community involved in transportation. This includes representatives from Pathfinder Services, HAT and the city police department. We developed possible solutions and submitted a proposal. We also performed a skit based on our work.
The robot design was based on missions we had to run. This included going under and over obstacles, picking things up and stopping in an exact spot. We decided to make the robot four wheel drive. At the regional competition we won an award for robot design.
I enjoyed the competition and just working with friends. Building with Legos and programming computers is fun too. Thanks to all our sponsors, coaches and parents for a great season.
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Thunderbirds Team 3669 to Compete at Purdue University Calumet
In the last few years we have presented our robot and our team at various events, including festivals, parades, and 4-H events, but one of the most powerful was the Family Fun Fest. This event is put on by local businesses for low income families and their children. The best way to conquer poverty is education, and FIRST has been shown to improve the chances of students going to a 4 year university. Hopefully by showing the children how "fun" the robots are, they will be more likely to become involved in either FLL or FRC in the future, and can improve their standard of living.
As a team we participate in many things to help our community, one of these is taking part in the adopt-a-highway program. All team members regularly participate in heading out to US 24 and cleaning a strip of the highway. We do this as it is our mission to make this world a better, and cleaner place to live.
One of the things that our team participates in doing is taking care of our planet. One of the ways we do this is through our recycling program. We do our best to recycle what we can, including paper, plastic, aluminum, ink cartridges, cell phones, and much more. Our aim is to clean the world, and instill the ideals of recycling into the students here.
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