Inspire Award 2019

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The Rise of JeDi Wall-E and his Masters

~ The best thing about FIRST robotics is that you got to share what you learned with your community in a kind and creative way.~

Margaret E. Hitt 

January 04, 2020

I enjoyed watching the latest Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker, with my family over the winter break. One important message that stuck with me was something about being a Jedi; “Confronting the fear is the destiny of a Jedi.” But I was not thinking about becoming a Jedi; rather, the fear that I had faced a few weeks ago.   

“When I first got to the States, I felt scared. There were at least 10 opponent teams that had competed at the World Championship last season; and since only 7 out of 72 teams will go to Worlds this year-- How on earth would we be able to beat them?”

After setting up our pit and getting our robot inspected on Friday morning, December 13, 2019, we had a quick lunch and rehearsed our judging interview. We had prepared a 5-minute detailed presentation of what we did in our SkyStone season and possible answers for another 5 minutes answering judges’ questions. We went in at 1:00 pm for our interview.  Overall, the Judging Interview went better than I anticipated: Everyone spoke fluently and answered the judges’ questions confidently; some even went into more detail than we had prepared! We celebrated with hugs and cheers - then quickly dived into the exciting robot competition mode. We took our competition robot, Jedi Wall-E, to the practice field, practicing with our alliance partners and discussing game strategies before each of our matches. By the end of Friday night, we competed in 4 qualification matches and had one set of judges interview us at the pit.  

On Saturday morning, four rounds of interview judges visited us at the pit.  They came at different times when our drive team was in and out in the qualification match or the practice field.  One set of judges interviewed us without Jedi Wall-E’s presence. They showed high interest in our community outreach and 3D-designed and printed robot parts, and asked detailed questions about them.  We enjoyed answering those questions as much as we did in our Friday judging interview. 

After the 6th qualification match, we ranked #2 and were thus qualified to enter the Semifinal matches. As the #2 seed captain, we chose 2 alliance partners, Team #16668, the Four Gear Clovers from Brighton, and Team #11531, the Techno Trojans II, from Fruitport.  We spent some time together to draw out the optimal autonomous pathways and practiced in the practice fields a few times. We decided to have Jedi Wall-E do all of the tasks, including delivering 2 skystones and 1 then one stone, and placing them on the foundation, and then repositing the foundation.  Our alliance’s robot would just park under the skybridge toward the wall so that Jedi Wall-E would have enough space to park under the skybridge.

Right before our Semifinal matches, I had a feeling of fear again: “Semifinals are very challenging; no positive experience thus far this season at the semifinals… What if we lose it all?”  But then I remembered what we agreed on at our last team meeting before coming to Battle Creek: What we learn is more important than what we win. We’d always look for opportunities to gain positive experience and will bring back good tips and lessons for next season.  Feeling better, I walked into our first Semi-Final Match with a few encouraging words in my head from my coach: “Just be yourself and enjoy what you do”. 

In the three rounds of Semifinal matches, we won two and lost one, which allowed our alliance teams to compete with the #1 seed alliance team at the Finals. Jedi Wall-E performed consistently at the Autonomous Mode: 3 stone placement wowed the audience, MC, and judges. The two rounds of final matches were very tough. With very close scores, 90:82 and 99: 98, we won the Edison Division. Cheers and hugs went all around. It’s the first time that the TechnoHuskies team won in their division - let alone the States! That was an incredible experience, even though we lost against the winning alliances of the Franklin Division. We were crowned Eddison Division Champions!

The last part of the State Championships was the awards ceremony. We received an award for being the Finalist Alliance Captain, as well as the Inspire Award. The Inspire Award is the highest award that you can earn in the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) competition. This judged award is given to the team that best embodies the ‘challenge’ of the FTC program. The Team that receives this award is a strong ambassador for FIRST robotics programs and a role model FTC Team, including the ability to remove engineering obstacles through creative thinking, innovative robot design, reliable robot control, community engagement, gracious professionalism, team spirit, and teamwork.  

Winning the Inspire Award at the State Championship greatly benefits to me and my team.  My team joined FTC teams in 2015, 10 years after FIRST Inspires introduced FIRST Tech Challenges to middle and high school students. This year, on our 5th birthday (2019), we celebrate FIRST’s 30th birthday along with the 50th anniversary of the moon landing and our advancement to the World Championship.  We are the first middle school in the Great Lakes Bay region to represent Michigan at the Worlds! 

Looking back, when I first joined the Jefferson TechnoHuskies in 2016, I was the only girl on the team.  Over the past 2 and a half years, the number of girls on our team has grown exponentially: we now have five girls and six boys.  Working together as a team is definitely one of our milestones. My teammate Jessica said,  “I have learned so much about what it means to work as a team to accomplish such a great task as building and programming a fully functional robot. Each person has to really contribute their talent and hard work for every component to come together.”  And both Lucy and Sophie pointed out that no matter what happened, we stayed positive prowling through all the challenges coming our way.  Sabiha enjoyed learning underlying math and science principles, and Nimai learned a lot about how to deal with pressure as a driver. 

My teammates and I have grown together by participating in FIRST robotics programs and activities. Our friendship has helped me go through the tough times in competitions, and we will continue to encourage each other to become future inventors and innovators!