This 2023-2024 FIRST ® season, follow along as we hear from four FIRST® LEGO® League, four FIRST® Tech Challenge, and four FIRST® Robotics Competition Diary of an Innovator teams about their season experience and the culture of innovation their team has created.
This post is by Team UniQorn Dreamers from Acton, MA, USA.
Q: How has your team’s season been going so far?
A: Our MASTERPIECESM season has been going very well. Our team won the Champion’s Award (2nd place) in the Massachusetts Championship at WPI.
Q: Tell us about your team’s Innovation Project. How did your team pick a topic?
A: Our goal this year was to create a way to enable artists and actors, who are blind, deaf, have special needs, or are in a wheelchair to perform onstage without ever feeling left out. For this, we met with Sam Gould, President of Open Door Theater – A non-profit MA organization with the social justice mission of access, inclusion, and diversity in arts. We also visited the MIT museum, Shakespeare in the park show, and the Avid company to research and discover what forms of art can be made inclusive for the differently abled. We listed our ideas in the spreadsheet and interviewed and surveyed many experts for feedback on the impact, feasibility, and wow factor. Our expert helped us narrow down to 2 ideas based on what seemed like a more suitable technology for deaf/blind actors. After that, we narrowed down to one based on implementation feasibility.
Q: How has your team been working together to solve problems this MASTERPIECE season?
A: At the beginning of the season, all of us prototyped different box-robot designs based on the requirements we got from analyzing the robot game mission mat. We tested our robots for navigation accuracy in a “bot match”. We noted what features were different and what caused some prototypes to work much better than others. This process helped us build a final box-robot that was better overall. Also, to switch attachments quickly we needed a consistent slip-on attachment port. We discussed what that would look like: height, width, slotting mechanism and then standardized the attachments everyone built to work with the same slip-on attachment port.
Q: How has your team iterated on their Robot Design/Project?
A: Iterations on the Innovation Project were made through expert feedback and field testing. Robot design iterations were guided by mission scores and strategy to solve the mat. Valuable lessons were:
- It is very important to seek expert feedback to understand the true gap and user’s preferences. For example, one of our project ideas was a “talking glove”, that a deaf artist can wear while using ASL and the glove will translate it to English, enabling seamless communication with the audience. We thought it was a great idea, but our expert told us how the deaf artist would not like to make an accommodation that is not meant for them but for the hearing-enabled audience. In other words, technology should adapt to the user and not vice-versa.
- With respect to robot design, we learned that performance of our robot could vary significantly on another table. We iterated our design and mission strategy to counter the unpleasant effects of this variation. We realized that testing on different mats was important.
Q: What tips do you have for new teams that are getting ready for an event?
A: First, expect the unexpected! Every event is a learning experience and take it as such. We found it hard to cope with failures when we saw our robots work unexpectedly on the game mat when we went to our first event. Also, remember to cheer for other teams and observe their games / posters. We learnt a lot observing other teams in our first year, that helped us grow.
One piece of advice for all teams is to stay hydrated and keep snacking through the long day. Lastly, make friends and be kind, we are all in this together!
Q: What’s the most surprising lesson your team has learned together this season so far?
A: We learned that following a consistent process for preparing the robot before the game was extremely important. The importance of engineering solutions that weighed-in the risk vs benefit in identifying which mission strategy to use at the event was also important.
Q: Has your team participated in an event (or are you preparing for one)?
A: We already finished the state championship and won 2nd place, so we will be preparing for the FIRST® LEGO® League WPI Open Invitational in 2024.
Q: How did your team get their robot competition-ready?
A: Combining participation in scrimmage, regionals and other local game mats, we had over 50 practice matches using our robot. If we saw a consistent problem across all matches, we iterated the robot or navigation. Knowing the variation in scores for different robot game matches allowed us to have a clear strategy for the state championship.
Q: How did your team prepare for judging?
A: We wrote down our statements for each slide and timed our delivery to cut it down to meet the 5 minute time requirement. We sought help from our coaches and parents as listeners/ judges to practice our presentation.
Q: What was the team’s favorite part of the event?
A: Their favorite part was the judging and the award ceremony. It was a relief to get done with the judging earlier in the day and get encouraging feedback from the judges. The award ceremony was something we were looking forward to since our game score was second highest.
Q: What was the most challenging aspect of the event?
A: The most challenging part was to stay spirited through the Robot Game matches until the last match as our scores were not to our expectations. Sometimes we made errors, broke attachments and observed failures that we didn’t expect.
Stay tuned for our next post from the UniQorn Dreamers later this year and stay tuned for the other teams’ posts coming soon!
Catch up on the previous FIRST LEGO League Diary of an Innovator teams’ posts here.
Learn about the FIRST Tech Challenge Diary of an Innovator teams here, and the FIRST Robotics Competition Diary of an Innovator teams here.
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