May 26-31, 2024

Our FTC team co-hosted our high school, Vandegrift, FTC program's rookie camp! We helped create a mock game for our organization's 40+ FTC rookies called Cosmic Clash that was designed to teach our rookies the basics of FTC. We organized teams of 3-4 and mentored them through a mini season's hardware, software, and marketing. We also led workshops on judging, game strategy, basic robot hardware, and FIRST!

June 7, 2024

We visited Texas Robotics' facilities down at the University of Texas at Austin, learning about their ongoing projects and research and all of their past works as well. We saw their path following/autonomous robots, like Fetch, Scratt, and their ClearPath robots, medical robots, like the ACT Hand, Da Vinci, and Harmony, and nuclear robots, like Alph, Magni, and the Vault Bot.

October 5, October 26, & November 16, 2024

Our program, LifeLine, introduced Austin-area kids to STEM with real world engineering problems like floods, oil spills, and avalanches through simulated crisis scenarios and challenged them to brainstorm and develop innovative solutions. We then taught them what real world engineers did in response to the problem and the engineering concepts behind them.

October 7 & 28, 2024

We met with students from our local feeder middle schools, Four Points Middle School and Canyon Ridge Middle School, to introduce them to FIRST robotics programs like FTC. We also got to showcase our robot and answer any questions the kids had about robotics and STEM in general!

October 14, 2024

In October, we toured Tyrex, a local dinosaur themed manufacturing company! We got to see their 3D printers, including their resin printers with their custom light engines, their manufacturing zones, and work in progresses like EV cable harnesses. We learned about the real world usages of 3D printing, the engineering and manufacturing process, and got to visit lots of cool dinosaur statues!

November 16, 2024

We got to go meet the members of the Austin Radio Control Association at their flying field, Lester Field! We discussed the mechanisms behind each RC aircraft (including a plane with a real jet-fueled turbine), watched some flight demos of different planes, and tried our hands at the association's flight simulator!