FIRST Technical Challenge Team #6972: January 2016

Monday, January 25, 2016

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Qualifier Results

Results are in: F.I.R.E. is advancing to the NC FTC State Tournament!

F.I.R.E.'s recognitions at Charlotte's Imaginon Qualifying Tournament:

2nd place Inspire Award

1st place Think Award

Finalist Connect Award

Finalist Motivate Award

What do they mean? from the FIRST Tech Challenge website:

INSPIRE AWARD

This judged award is given to the team that truly embodied the ‘challenge’ of the FTC program. The team that receives this award is a strong ambassador for FIRST programs and a role model FTC team. This team is a top contender for many other judged awards and is a gracious competitor. The Inspire Award Winner is an inspiration to other teams, acting with Gracious Professionalism™ both on and off the playing field. This team is able to communicate their experiences, enthusiasm and knowledge to other teams, sponsors, their community, and the Judges. Working as a unit, this team will have demonstrated success in accomplishing the task of designing and building a robot. The winner of the Inspire Award at each tournament level has received an automatic invitation to the next tournament level.

THINK AWARD

Removing engineering obstacles through creative thinking. This judged award is given to the team that best reflects the journey the team took as they experienced the engineering design process during the build season. The Engineering Section of the notebook is the key reference for judges to help identify the most deserving team. The team’s Engineering Section should focus on the design and build stage of the team’s robot. Journal entries should include those describing the underlying science and mathematics of the robot design and game strategies, the designs, re-designs, successes, and those interesting moments when things weren’t going as planned. A team is not a candidate for this award if they have not completed the Engineering Section of the Engineering Notebook.

CONNECT AWARD

Connecting the dots between community, FIRST®, and the business world. This judged award is given to the team that most connects with their local STEM community. A true FIRST team is more than a sum of its parts, and recognizes that engaging their local STEM community plays an essential part in their success. The recipient of this award is recognized for helping the community understand FIRST, the FIRST Tech Challenge, and the team itself. The team that wins the Connect Award aggressively seeks engineers and explores the opportunities available in the world of engineering, science and technology. This team has a clear Business or Strategic Plan and has identified steps to achieve their goals.

MOTIVATE AWARD

More than Robots! This judged award celebrates the team that exemplifies the essence of the FIRST Tech Challenge competition through team building, team spirit and exhibited enthusiasm. This team embraces the culture of FIRST and clearly demonstrates what it means to be a team. This is a team who makes a collective effort to make FIRST known throughout their school and community, and sparks others to embrace the culture of FIRST.

NC FTC Qualifying Tournament in Charlotte @ Imaginon

We learned a lot about our strategy at our qualifier! Robot rounds went well after we solved the phone cord problems. We met some really cool teams and alliances during our sojourn at Imaginon.

Early morning emergency pitstop by the light of a cell phone app, backstage,

getting ready for field inspection

Speaking with judges at the team pit

"Rabbit" repairs in between rounds

Waiting for tournament results

Friday, January 15, 2016

Autonomous Code: Midzone Mountain

Yeah! JAVA autonomous code to go up the mountain to midzone-

of course, there was a large crash directly following!

Qualifying Tournament

Qualifying Tournament:

This Saturday! January 16, 2016
at Imaginon

Tournament address: 300 E 7th Street Charlotte NC 28202
Free Parking at Seventh Street Station 224 E 7th Street