// Team 3507 Robotheosis //

Outreach Log 2015-2019

“If it’s not in the notebook, it didn’t happen.”

Hosted the Francis W. Parker Qualifier

(12/12/15)

        During the 2015-16 season, our team hosted the Francis W. Parker Qualifier for Chicago and Illinois. We did not compete in this tournament since we were involved in a League. To prepare for the tournament we took three meetings (9 hours of robot work time) off to prepare for the tournament. During this time we made tournament buttons, signs, prepared the field and set up the AV and field system for the tournament.

At this tournament all of our 17 team members volunteered and countless parents, teachers and students from our school volunteered to make the event run smoothly. Our team members assisted in many different aspects such as field reset and queuing. Additionally since this year came with a brand new control system, one of our team members who was very comfortable with the control system was an Assistant FTA.

The tournament was very successful and we were happy to help Illinois FIRST. Additionally we would like to note that we did not receive a qualifying slot to the state tournament and that we qualified for Illinois State on our own.

Museum of Science and Industry Demo

(4/9/16)

Each year the Museum of Science and Industry hosts a Robot Block Party week where they invite local robotics teams, university robotics teams and other companies to come and demonstrate their creations. This event is open to all that come to the museum during the given week and it is a great opportunity to talk with local kids, colleges and companies about the robots.

In April, during our spring break, two team members took our FTC robot to MSI and showed it off via matches with other FTC teams and through talking with museum visitors.

IEG 2016 Presentation for Dean Kamen

(4/19/16)

In 2016, we were asked by Illinois FIRST to help represent FTC and FIRST robotics at IEG 2016. This event was a week long technology/business conference where Dean Kamen was a keynote speaker. At this event before Mr. Kamen spoke our team demonstrated our Res-Q robot for those attending the event and additionally we talked with those attending about what FIRST is and about FIRST’s core mission. There were several thousand people at the event and we were one of two FTC teams in attendance in addition to one FRC team. The event was a great opportunity for us to show off FIRST and our FTC team.

Hosted the Francis W. Parker FLL Kickoff

(9/17/16)

In addition to our FTC team, our school is also the home to 3 FLL teams. Along with these three teams, our team hosted an FLL Kickoff for Chicago and Suburban Teams. The 2016-17 FLL theme was Animal Allies. Due to the close proximity of the Lincoln Park Zoo to our school, we brought in Zookeepers and other animal experts to talk with people about human and animal interactions, the treatments of animals in zoo’s and other animal related topics that pertained to the design project for FLL. Additionally, we brought in an FLL Head Referee to answer any and all questions that kids and mentors had about the FLL field.

Additionally, our team presented our 2015-16 FTC robot and our 2014-15 FRC robot to those attending. Team members then talked about FTC with students and parents to inform them about the next step for them in the robotics world.

Francis W. Parker County Fair Demo

(10/9/16)

Each and every year our school hosts a County Fair where each grade runs a booth ranging from serving food to providing entertainment through games where you can win candy and other prizes. On top of every grade having booths, a few other groups/clubs have booths to show off what they do and to allow the community to have fun. So, our team every year has a booth where we set up a field to allow kids to drive robots. While kids drive we talk with parents about our work in robotics.

In past years we would put out 5-7 VEX Robotics small Education bots. This would always disrupt our build season since we would have to pull out robots that have not been used in a year and we have to use build systems and programming languages that we do not use in FTC. So, this year in order to make the robots more fun and to allow our team to be more productive, we created 5 FTC style robots made by our Freshman and Sophomores. They built the bots and programmed them in Blockly allowing them to gain more knowledge on what they were to really build during the season.

So, this year we had 5 FTC style robots out and allowed kids of all ages to drive with and play with the robots. This event outreach event was very successful since parents were educated about our robotics team and we hopefully got some kids interested in joining the team.

Coding Skype Session with 9775 Intrinsic

(11/3/16)

In preparation for the League Meet that we were hosting, our team sent an email to everyone attending the meet and informed everyone that we were available to talking with/Skype with if teams needed help with programming. We did this due to the high amount of rookie teams  and newer teams in the Chicago League. Following this email team 9775 Intrinsic in Chicago contacted us in need of assistance. So, one of our team members who knew how to code skipped with the team and assisted them with their code. Additionally, at our League Meet we helped many additional teams with coding.

Hosted Francis W. Parker North Division League Meet 1

(11/5/16)

On November 5th we hosted League Meet 1 for the Chicago North Division. During the event our team competed and volunteered. While our drive team competed in five matches the rest of our team filled in key roles such as scorekeeper, queerer, field reset, event set-up/take down and in many other positions. We were happy to host the event and help the North Division since our team is very capable of hosting a League Meet. We plan on hosting meets and/or the League Championship in future years.

Francis W. Parker Open House Demo

(11/19/16)

Every year our school hosts an open house to show itself to prospective new students and every year at this open house we open up our robotics shop for those visiting to see. This year we set up tables and ended up working near the doors so as people entered they could see what we were working on and ask us questions about our program/team. This event is always great for us and it allows us to see which prospective new students are interested in robotics.

Francis W. Parker Morning Ex

(1/6/17)

        At our school, Francis W. Parker, there are weekly assembles that last forty minutes. Notable speakers have been Albert Einstein, Jackie Robinson, President Barack Obama and our robotics teams. In addition to many famous speakers/presenters, the majority of the presentations are by people who attend our school. So, each year to showcase our team and what we do, our robotics team does a presentation. This year we presented for around half of the time and our three FLL teams presented for the rest of the time. Our goal for the talk was to inspire the younger students and get them excited about doing robotics.

FWP Fifth grade STEM Week Presentation

(2/23/17)

In February two team members, Levi and Nathan, presented our robot from the 16-17 year and the 15-16 year to the fifth grade class at Francis W. Parker School. During the fourth week of February, the fifth grade had a STEM Week in which they learned about programming, sensors and building robots. They used/learned about many systems including the Lego EV3 system used in FLL. We talked with them about STEM and robotics and encouraged them to join the team and fielded their questions. The class was very excited and wowed by our robots and it was a successful event as the teachers have asked our team to present again next year during their STEM Week

FWP Library Maker Wednesday Robot Petting Zoo

(3/3/17)

Our school library beginning in the 16-17 school year hosts bi-monthly maker days. During these after school days they explore many different topics with the overall theme of driving creativity and creation. One of these days theme was robots and during this day they had a robot petting zoo where the kids could drive numerous little robots that the library had. Our team was invited to the event and we demonstrated our past two robots and let kids drive them and have fun. This day was amazing for our team and we believe that we have sparked many kids interest in robotics. Many of these kids (since they were Kindergarten through third graders) had never played with robots before and they had a blast.

FWP JK-2nd grade Grandparents day Presentation

(3/17/17)

        Every year at our school they host a day where grandparents get to shadow their grandchildren and follow them for half a day in class. During this day the grandparents watch a handful of presentations put on by classes, teachers and our principle. This year for the first time ever, our team was invited to show the grandparents the schools robotics team and robot. During this presentation we told the grandparents about our work in robotics, what being on a robotics team is like and the overall goals of our team in a broad sense. We additionally answered any questions that the grandparents had.

Rainbow Push Demo

(3/18/17)

        The Chicago organization, Rainbow Push, is trying to start a FIRST Tech Challenge program. In March they had a day at their community center where they invited local high school students to stop by and see what robotics is all about. To help out, they invited our team to show off our robot from the year to help show perspective team members what they would be building while on the robotics team. This was a great event for our team as we helped a fellow Chicago team start up their program and additionally we probably will be mentoring this team during the 2017-18  season.

FWP 3rd grade Demo

(3/27/17)

        After our successful demonstration to the fifth grade in February, the third grade teachers asked our team to present for their students. On March 27th, we demonstrated our robots to the entire third grade class, explained to them what we do in robotics and answered all of there questions.

Museum of Science and Industry Demo

(4/15/17)

Just as we did last year, we presented at the Museum of Science and Industry during their Robot Block Party Week. The day we were there, we ran mock matches against other FTC teams, presented our robot to museum attendees and promoted first and the FIRST Tech Challenge Program.

FWP Upper School Grandparents Day Demo

(4/17/17)

        Following our presentation to Pre-Kindergarten - third grade grandparents, we were invited to present to the Upper School Grandparents. For the most part, we gave the save demonstration as before and then answered any burning questions that the grandparents had for us.

Lycee Francais FTC Team Creation

(2017-18 School Year)

Beginning in 2016 we have been in contact with various teachers and members of the administration at the Lycee Francais French School of Chicago. We are working with them to start a robotics program at their school. Lycee is planning on starting an FTC team at the school next year and is thinking about starting an FLL program. Our team members will be regularly attending their meetings and will be mentoring them. This spring, we will be hosting many of their prospective members to teach them about FTC and the various build systems. We are happy to have found a program that we can help nurture and start. Our team members are hungry to share their unparalleled FTC knowledge with other teams.

        On December, 19 2017, members of Lycee Francais visited our Robotics Lab during one of our meetings. We showed them the space requirements that FTC has, talked with them about the program in general, and let them know about our dedication to helping their program succeed. The next step for them is to discuss among the administration and then we will step in to help teach their students.

County Fair

(10/6/17)

Each and every year our school hosts a County Fair where each grade runs a booth ranging from serving food to providing entertainment through games where you can win candy and other prizes. On top of every grade having booths, a few other groups/clubs have booths to show off what they do and to allow the community to have fun. So, our team every year has a booth where we set up a field to allow kids to drive robots. While kids drive we talk with parents about our work in robotics.

In past years we would put out 5-7 VEX Robotics small Education bots. This would always disrupt our build season since we would have to pull out robots that have not been used in a year and we have to use build systems and programming languages that we do not use in FTC.

This year for county fair, we decided to utilize our Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine and make custom, team member designed robots. County fair allowed kids to experience robotics, sometimes for the first time.

Upper School Open House

(11/18/17)

        On November, 18th we opened up our robotics lab once again. Beginning at 10:30 and continuing until 12:30, parents and students looking to attend Parker flowed through our workspace. We showed off our robotics from this year and past years. Team members talked about skills that you can learn in robotics such as, programming, CAD skills, basic engineering principles, and teamwork skills. We also fielded questions from everyone walking through about robotics, our work, and parker in general. Many parents were happy that we were there presenting as they wanted to ask us students questions about the school in addition to their questions about robotics.

Hour of Code

(12/6/17)

The entire Upper School simultaneously engaged in the same activity: coding! The hour of code occurred during the Computer Science Education Week, and Parker was an official host site for an Hour of Code. This student-designed and led event was the brainchild of Nathan Satterfield ’19 (team captain), the Computer Technology Committee (CTC), and the FWP Robotics team. Students in grades 9–12 filled the Kovler Family Library, Harris Center, Math Wing, MS Collab Lab and Sheridan Family Cafe to engage in customized coding explorations and challenges (self-selecting activities based on their level of coding experience). These custom challenges were made by members of the robotics team. The challenges that we used and created are available on our website today for all to use and play. Additionally, we are running a second hour of code on April 20th.

Francis W. Parker Chicago December League Meet 2

(12/6/17)

For the second year in a row, our team hosted a Chicago League Meet. We hosted 12 other teams in our gym and ran the 15 match league meet. Our two FTC teams each had three members for their drive team and the other 13 members of our team volunteered to make the event possible. We enjoy hosting as it allows to help out other Chicago teams because our team has lots of members and experience hosting so hosting is not disruptive to our season.

Francis W. Parker Morning Ex

(1/5/18)

Each and every year we host an all-school assembly called Morning Exercise (MX) to share our FTC robots and our three FLL teams. Primarily the MX serves as a way for us to communicate with the school what we are doing in robotics and to showcase our creations. Secondarily, the MX serves as a way to promote our team and FIRST robotics within our school to get the younger kids excited to do robotics.

Presenting to 1st grade, 2nd grade, Junior Kindergarten and Senior Kindergarten classes at FWP

(2/2/18 and 2/7/18)

Over the past two weeks we presented to various grades at our school. At these presentations we presented alongside our 8th grade FLL team and our second FTC team, 9410 Frank's Garage. These presentations allow us to show kids what they can look forward to later in there school life. The presentations also serve as a way to get kids interested in robotics early with the hope that they will pursue their own robotics related presentations.

Hosted the Chicago Robotics Invitational

(7/20/18 and 7/21/18)

Vision:

Shortly after our season ended back in March, following our super successful North Super Regional appearance, we decided to host an off-season event in July called the Chicago Robotics Invitational. One of the main goals of the event was to host a top-notch off-season event that teams want to come to year after year. This would create a community of teams that would come together during the summer to have fun and compete, while making new friends and new connections.

In order to create a top event, we looked at the Indiana Robotics Invitational (IRI) and Chezy Champs, two of the top FRC off-season events. IRI has been running for 10+ years, and Chezy Champs is hosted by the top FRC team 254.

Some of the things that we found that made the events engaging and fun was to have a team social (which we had the Friday before matches started), give out awards to teams, and to allow teams to play as many matches as possible.

Additionally, we found that the timing of the event greatly impacted the number of teams wanting to attend an off-season event. So we decided to host CRI in July as it is the optimal time because teams have a few months to rest following the completion of Worlds and teams haven’t generally started planning for the upcoming season.

Purpose:

The main goal of the Chicago Robotics Invitational is to allow teams to: 1) have fun at an off-season event and; 2) connect teams that wouldn't ordinarily connect and compete against each other. Another goal for the event was to have as many teams as possible from as many states as possible attend the tournament.

Funding:

Funding wise, our team needed to spend a little bit of money to get the event up and running, so, in order to offset much of the cost, we charged teams a $50 registration fee for attending the event. $50 was a very low registration fee, as we ended up spending more then we took in, but we decided to have a low registration fee for year 1 of CRI so as not to scare teams away from attending the tournament.

The money was used for purchasing food for the Friday team social (roughly $250), getting volunteer lunches on Saturday (roughly $200), buying some equipment for the event ($100), and lastly buying banners for the winning alliance ($150).

Additional expenses for the event came from the need to have security officers and maintenance staff at the school throughout the whole day of the Saturday event.  The money to pay the security and maintenance staff came out of the school’s general events fund, and not out of the robotics budget.

Sign up/finding teams:

        In order to have teams from near and far attend the event, we did a lot of promotion on social media. We sent out many posts via our team’s twitter and facebook accounts in order to reach a lot of people. Members of our team then posted on the FTC reddit page and in the FTC discord in order to reach even more teams involved in FTC.

Following our mass postings, we then emailed and DM’d on twitter numerous teams to extend personal invitations to teams that we have become close with throughout the past couple of years.

Teams then signed up for the event using a Google form.  A month and a half before the event, we sent out acceptance emails to all 27 teams that signed up to attend. In the end,  21 of the 27 teams accepted our invitation, so there were 22 teams that ended up competing  including 3507.

The following teams actually ended up attending the event:

Volunteers:

For the event, we knew that we probably wouldn’t be able to get a lot of volunteers due to the event being in the summer so we organized the event to limit the number of volunteers needed. We put almost all the pits and both competition fields in the same gym vs. having pits in one gym on our school’s 3rd floor and the competition in our school’s main gym on the 2nd floor. This eliminated the need for most queuers and runners. Since the event was an off-season event, we didn’t need judges since the awards were going to be decided by our team’s two lead mentors (with 3507 exempt from receiving an award). Another way we eliminated the need for some volunteers was that we didn’t have each team go through inspection saving time and eliminating the need for hardware and software inspectors.

Concerning other volunteer positions, we needed at least 9 referees (4 per field and then an overall head ref), and we ended up having around 12 referees due to a number of alumni deciding to come volunteer at the last minute. We then had 2 announcers (MC and GA), 6 people on field reset, and some technical staff to run the live stream, scoring system, and an FTA.

Lastly, we asked each team that was coming to try to contribute at least one volunteer which made finding volunteers for queuing and field reset very easy.

Modified field:

In order to make CRI even more worthwhile for teams and to spice up the tournament, we modified the playing field considerably. See the diagram below:  

Here are the rules we modified:

Updates to GS4, GS7, GS10, GS12, GS14 & some notes below:

GS3 – Control/Possession Limits of Glyphs – no changes (NOTE: added time should help move those glyphs!)

GS4 – Glyph Hoarding – Once an alliance has successfully scored more than 20 30 Glyphs, the members of the Alliance may not collectively possess/control/block access to more than the number of Glyphs required for the Alliance to completely fill their Cryptoboxes. Violation of this rule will result in an immediate Major Penalty and an additional Minor Penalty assessed for each 5 seconds the rule violation persists per Glyph in excess of the limit. Intentional or repeated violations of this rule will escalate quickly to issuance of Yellow Cards to all members of the Alliance.

GS7 – De-scoring Relics – Robots may not remove or reposition the opposing team’s Relics In the opposing Alliance’s Recovery Zone. In the event of any re-positioning (for example, if a Blue Relic is dropped into the Blue Recovery Zone, bounces to the Red Recovery Zone and knocks the Red Relic from one Scoring position to another) the opposing Alliance’s Relic is awarded the maximum potential points (40 + 15 = 55).

The Naked Relic may be de-scored and removed/moved from the opposing Alliance’s Recovery Zone.  However, keep in mind that “De-scoring an opposing Alliance Specific Relic will be penalized, even if it is accidental.”  If the opposing Alliance Specific Relic was de-scored or moved to a lower scoring position due to deliberate interaction of any type with the Naked Relic there will be an additional Major Penalty on top of the maximum score for the de-scored Alliance Relic.

Example: Red has their two alliance specific relics and the naked relic scored on their relic mat. The blue alliance has scored 2 of their alliance specific relics and wants to grab the naked relic. If the blue alliance gains control of the naked relic without disturbing/changing the scoring state of the red alliance relics, this is legal. If the blue alliance gains control of the naked relic and knocks over/changes the scoring state of one or both red alliance relics, the relics are scored as 55pts (standing + in zone 3) and a major penalty is awarded for each relic that had its scoring state changed.

GS8 – Interfering with Access to Cryptobox – no changes (NOTE: each alliance now has 3 safe zones.)

GS10 – Controlling or Blocking access to Relics – Robots may not Control, Trap, or Block access to an opposing Alliance’s Relic. Robots may not Control, Trap, or Block access to the Naked Relic if it has Zero Score value for the Alliance (See <GS14>). The first instance will result in an immediate Major Penalty and an additional Minor Penalty assessed for every five seconds that the rule violation persists. If the referee declares a Controlling, Trapping, or Blocking access Penalty, the offending Robot must move away at least 3 ft. (0.9 m), approximately 1.5 floor tiles from the opponent’s Relic. Additional occurrences of violations of this rule will escalate to Yellow Cards quickly.

The intent of this rule is to allow Robot access to their Relics. Blocking means denying ALL access, so general Robot movement with respect to other Robots should not be considered in violation unless there is no other way to traverse the Playing Field to get the Relic. Also, note that this rule requires attempted action on the part of the opposing Alliance.

GS11 – Blocking access to Balancing Stone – no changes (NOTE: only applies to opposing Alliance Balancing Stones.  The neutral Center Balancing Stone is exempt.)

GS12 – Balancing Stone Interference – Robots may not interfere with the opposing Alliance’s Robot or opposing Alliance’s Balancing Stone while that Robot is attempting to Balance on their Alliance Balancing Stone during the End Game. Once a Robot is in contact with the Balancing Stone this rule will apply. The first instance will result in a warning with any following violations resulting in a Major Penalty and an additional Minor Penalty assessed for every five seconds that the rule violation persists. The intent of this rule is to allow Robots to balance on their Alliance Balancing Stone without interference. Additional occurrences of violations of this rule will escalate to Yellow Cards quickly.  

This rule only applies to opposing Alliance Balancing Stones.  The neutral Center Balancing Stone is exempt; however, rules regarding general robot behavior (e.g., egregious behavior <G27> and purposely tipping/damaging another robot <G16>) must still be followed.

GS14 – Relic Control – Robots may Control or Possess their own Alliance’s Relics at any time but may only Score their Relic (i.e. reach over the Playing Field Wall) during the End Game or when the Relic is eligible to be Scored (whichever is earlier). Robots may only Control, Possess, or Score the Naked Relic during the End Game or when eligible to be Scored (whichever is earlier). The Naked Relic may be Controlled, Possessed, or Scored once Two (2) Cryptobox Ciphers are solved prior to the start of End Game. The Naked Relic and its eligibility to be scored is independent of the Two (2) alliance specific relics. See below:

If One (1) Cryptobox Cipher is correctly solved prior to the start of End game, an alliance is permitted to Score One (1)  of their Alliance Specific Relics Early.

If a second (2) Cryptobox Ciphers are correctly solved prior to the start of End game, an alliance is permitted to score their second alliance specific relic AND the naked relic.

Alliance Relics that are moved Outside the Playing Field Wall (by their Alliance) before they are eligible will have zero Score value. If the Naked Relic is Controlled, Possessed, or Scored before it is eligible it will have Zero Score value for the Alliance and the Alliance will receive a Double Major Penalty.  The non-offending Alliance will remain eligible to score the Naked Relic.  

<GS10> Controlling or Blocking access to Relics applies if the Naked Relic has Zero Score value for the Alliance. Intentional or repeated violations of this rule will escalate quickly to issuance of Yellow Cards to all members of the Alliance.

GS16 – Scoring Relics – no changes. (NOTE: Applies to all relics.)

Additionally, we added 1 minute total to tele-op and within the minute we added 15 seconds of it to the end game.

Speakers:

        At the beginning of the opening ceremonies our school’s Principal Dan Frank came and spoke for a few minutes to welcome all teams in attendance, and to wish them luck at the tournament. Following Dan Franks’ short speech, the director of First Updates Now (FUN), Tyler Olds, spoke briefly. Mr. Olds spoke about the live-stream that was running on FUN, how he would be coming around to interview teams, and other things related to his platform of FIRST shows on FUN.

Other additions to the event:

For the audience at home, we live streamed the entire tournament on twitch.tv/firstupdatesnow where over 1,500 unique viewers tuned into the stream throughout the day to watch the competition.

Something else we did was to have live scoring at the competition. Jacob Burroughs, the lead scorekeeper in Illinois, developed his own version of last year’s scoring system with live scoring to make our event even better to watch online and watch from the stands.

Afterward:

After the end of the tournament, we sent out a feedback form to all the volunteers and teams that attended the tournament. Based on the feedback, we concluded that teams greatly enjoyed the event and would want to attend the event again next year. Therefore, we will be hosting the event again on Saturday, July 20th 2019.

We looked into seeing if we could host the event over two days (Saturday and Sunday), but our school rents out most of its facilities on Sundays to the Lincoln Park Church. We would be able to host the tournament on the Sunday but there would be many restrictions to how event attendees would be able to move around the school which doesn’t make the event practical. We will be sticking to a strictly one-day tournament.

Additionally, we will raise the registration fee from $50 to $100 or $125 in order to allow us to purchase more pizza for teams on Friday night, more volunteer food on Saturday, new banners again, and volunteer shirts.

Robot in One Weekend

(9/8/18 and 9/9/18)

During kickoff weekend we built three robots between Saturday and Sunday. The challenge for this year was released at 11 a.m. on Saturday, and, knowing the challenge, we spent all day Saturday and Sunday prototyping robots using parts kits donated by Andymark and REV Robotics. During the course of the weekend, alumni, volunteers from around the Illinois robotics community, students from other teams and mentors joined Parker’s team in the challenge of building a robot in one weekend. We ended up building three robots, as mentioned above, and currently we are in the process of furthering those robot designs. We are also creating tutorial videos about our robots so that teams can learn from our work during the weekend. Similar to the event during the summer, we live-streamed the whole Robot in One Weekend, and at the end of each day, we sat down and did recaps of each sub-team’s progress with their robot.

County Fair

10/5/18

As in past years, we opened up our workshop during our school’s County Fair to allow students to drive our robots. We used the same minibots as we did last year for students 5th grade and younger and for students in middle school and older, we let them drive our FTC robots from last year. Unique to this year, we opened up our entire workshop and let parents and anyone else look around as the shop was newly constructed for our team this past summer. This is always an amazing event for our team as we are able to interact with a lot of very young students and parents who are always excited about our school’s success in robotics.  Many parents say they can’t wait for their child to be able to be a part of the FLL teams in 6th grade and then FTC in 9th grade.

Morning Ex

1/11/19

As we have done for the past three years, we presented to our entire school about our season so far in robotics. Over the course of the 30-minute presentation, we talked about our CAD work, programming, and more. We showcased the prototyping process where we talked about how we design robots, build mockups using cardboard first, and then more functional prototypes using our CNC and Laser cutter machinery. We also discussed how the robot is never finished, and how we are constantly prototyping. To finish off the presentation, we demoed our robot for the audience and showed everyone what the challenge for this year is.

FTC Illinois Event Cart Proposal

Chicago FIRST ® Tech Challenge Event Carts

Nathan Satterfield (Class of 2019, Francis w. Parker School)

nsatterfield@fwparker.org

312 - 257 - 8010 m.

Devin Keeney (Class of 2022, Illinois Institute of Technology, BS Computer Engineering)

dkeeney2@hawk.iit.edu

913 - 563 - 9015 m.

Overview

Each year, over 193 middle and high schools in Illinois compete in the FIRST® Tech Challenge robotics program. In Chicago alone, over 48 teams each year compete in approximately 14 events at high schools and other venues, each event requiring a large number of volunteers and significant technical equipment.

We are seeking funding that will allow FIRST Tech Challenge Illinois to purchase materials to set up Event Carts. These Event Carts will provide competitions with a scorekeeping system in addition to the Audio Visual (A/V) setup for the event, including live streaming, audience displays, and audio for the venue.

Currently, each venue hosting an event provides certain pieces of the audio equipment and scorekeeping system, but relies heavily on volunteers and teams to donate additional equipment for live streaming and the scoring system for each event.

FIRST Robotics Illinois does not have the available funding needed to acquire the Event Carts. We have been active volunteers for FIRST Tech Challenge Illinois, attending many events in the Chicago North and Chicago South divisions. In 2018, Nathan Satterfield, along with other FIRST Tech Challenge participants around the Midwest, started a live streaming program dedicated to the coverage of various FIRST Tech Challenge related topics. In the fall of 2018, Nathan attended a FIRST Tech Challenge State Championship in Battle Creek, MI as a volunteer. He and others produced live video coverage of the event that was streamed across multiple social networking sites. Nathan discovered that the State of Michigan provides significant funding to support FIRST Tech Challenge Robotics, and because of this funding support, Michigan has one of the most robust FIRST Tech Challenge programs in the world. Due to this, the state has multiple Event Carts that have become critical tools in the production of the FIRST Tech Challenge competitions.

An Event Cart would provide competition venues with an all-in-one collection of equipment, including the proper tools necessary to operate high quality events across all venues. We would like to create two event carts, one for the Chicago North division (currently serving 20 schools) and one for the Chicago South division (currently serving 28 schools), with the hope of expanding this into other parts of Illinois in the near future. It is also worth noting that the number of teams in Chicago has significantly expanded over the past few years. The number of teams has doubled and the events have grown by a factor of four over the past four years.

Goals

1. Provide all necessary equipment for the scoring and scorekeeping aspect of FIRST Tech Challenge tournaments. Equipment for scoring is necessary in order to run matches at events.
2. Have all the components needed to livestream matches occuring at each event. The purpose of live streaming is to broadcast video from events so that parents, relatives, and other community members can watch students’ robots compete, in addition to allowing the greater FIRST Tech Challenge community to interact with the events for the benefit of the entire competition. Based on previous events streaming, a typical event gets between 50 and 300+ unique people watching an event throughout the day. Following the conclusion of the event, match videos would be uploaded to YouTube™ for anyone to watch.
3. Provide all equipment for the event sound including play-by-play match announcing, in-match sounds to give game specific time information, and to allow music to be played during the event.

Why

FIRST® is designed to be a program based off the principles of sporting events to bring recognition and inspiration to STEM fields. The grandeur and spectacle of the competition is one of the most important parts of the sports analogy that FIRST attempts to emulate. Depending on the level of competition, there can be world class announcers, lights, audio, and other venue aspects that really make the event feel like it’s truly amazing for the students to participate.

This cart is designed to work on that aspect of the FIRST Tech Challenge program; the production value of the event. This cart allows every event, from the state and league championships to the very earliest meets of the season to have world-class audio and video systems for the teams, and to provide the most consistent and polished experience for teams.

By having all of these systems pre-setup in a case such as this one, we can shift responsibility of the volunteers there on the day to dealing with complicated A/V systems to focusing on the team experience, making sure every student on every team is getting the full experience of the program. High quality video that is recorded and streamed during the entirety of the event allows teams to market themselves and examine their own performance in addition.

Specifications

The cart consists of a variety of rack mounted material, housed in a Gator hard case, for ease of transportation and protection of equipment.

Audio System

The system features a Behringer Xenyx audio mixer for mixing event audio, with a PRORECK 4 channel wireless microphone setup feeding into the mixer. The mixer also features inputs and outputs from the main PC, allowing for music and audio cues to be played over both the venue and stream audio channels.

Streaming PC

The streaming PC is designed to be as powerful as possible for streaming events and running the FIRST Tech Challenge scoring system, including an Intel i5 CPU and a Nvidia GTX GPU, in addition to a large amount of storage and memory to ensure that events are recorded properly and smoothly.

Video System

For ideal streaming and audience display functionality, 6 Logitech Webcams with accompanying tripods of various heights are included, for a large amount of streaming options, accommodating the smallest of meets to league championships.

Scorekeeping System

The event also requires running the FIRST Tech Challenge-provided scoring system, which in addition to running the main scoring system on the Streaming PC, also requires four tablets for refereeing the matches, providing real time input for the teams, audience and stream viewers. A selection of tablets are also available for other purposes, including guidance in inspection, announcing, awards managing, and other assorted tasks.

Storage and Transportation of Event Carts

The event carts would be stored at the FIRST Tech Challenge Chicago Storage room at the Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech) where students from Illinois Tech Robotics (ITR) are tasked with maintaining and storing field materials during the off season (March through August). During the season, the carts would be transported and storage at the various schools hosting events each month.  

Funding goals

Sponsorship for the Event Carts would be made directly to Illinois FIRST Robotics, and the directors of the organization are aware of, and support the fundraising efforts.

1. Short term (by March 2019)

Secure $12,000 in order to purchase two event carts for the two Chicago FIRST Tech Challenge divisions. Debut and test these carts during the 2019-2020 season.

1. Long term (Before the 2020-2021 Season)

Secure an additional $60,000 in order to purchase and assemble 8 event carts for the other Illinois FIRST Tech Challenge divisions, provided the initial carts perform adequately. Funding would also be used to maintain and repair carts as we expect that replacement of materials in the carts would be necessary through general use that occurs through the robotics season. The carts are designed to be as robust as possible, but given the rigorous use of them, care will be necessary.