From homecoming parades to robot demonstrations, Hagerty Robotics eagerly participates in outreach events to spread the word about STEM to our community! In August and September, we built a Spirit Bot for all of the school pep rallies. Over 2,300 students cheered it on as it drove around with an iPad attached and recorded their cheers and chants.
Due to our participation in various FIRST outreach events as well as creating our own outreach events, both Hagerty Robotics teams were named Florida FIRST Showcase Teams for the 2015-2016 season. Check out some of the events we participated in below! |
Car Wash Fundraiser
Members of Hagerty Robotics worked in shifts at a local 7-11 to wash cars and raise money for our club. Instead of charging a flat rate for a wash, we decided that letting the drivers decide the price would allow us the greatest profit. Throughout the event, we also had sign-holders by the road to help advertise our carwash, and we positioned an outreach table by the front of the 7-11 to educate people about our club and ask for donations by the door of the store. This event was very successful; we raised $610. We are planning on holding more carwash fundraisers in the future.
Cub Scout Night
Six members from Hagerty Robotics prepared a presentation and led an outreach event for visiting cub scouts about what robots are and how they work. At the outreach event, we presented a history of robotics and educated the scouts on how a robot functions. We also taught them how to code their own EV3 line-following program and let them drive our FTC competition robots. We hope that this experience will encourage them to get involved with FIRST at an older age.
Evans Elementary School
Team members went to Evans Elementary School to assist, observe, and advise in the early days of their FIRST Lego League team. This is an ongoing outreach event that happens twice a month on Mondays. This outreach program allows our team to promote FIRST at the younger levels and increase interest in our robotics program, as well as support the local schools that are just starting to build their robotics teams.
HHS Homecoming Parade/Roboxer Creation
Hagerty’s homecoming theme this year was Olympics, so we chose boxing as our representative sport. We used recycled cardboard boxes to create costumes for our "roboxers", built and decorated our float to resemble Rock’em Sock’em Robots, and then members of our team walked with the float down Lockwood Boulevard. The kids loved the “fighting” robots, and it was a great opportunity to promote the robotics program at HHS. We even kept the roboxers throughout the FTC season to use as mascots at all of our competitions.
I/ITSEC
At the 2015 I/ITSEC, Hagerty Robotics assisted the FIRST booth in educating onlookers about the FIRST FTC competitions. We brought our robot to the booth to demo, offered to let people drive, and explained what FIRST is. We also took the chance to learn about new and upcoming technology and talk with professionals. We also made sure to look for new mentors and sponsors while we were there.
Frolicking Nerds
The Frolicking Nerds are a relatively new team from Crooms Academy. We invited them to join us in our robotics room, use our tools to work on their robot, and we allowed them to use to test their robot using our field. We were able to assist them in transitioning to the new phone system and even practiced with them. We invited them back whenever they feel necessary and we hope that soon they will be able to mentor a team of their own, spreading FIRST and robotics throughout the community.
Mini Maker Faire
The Mini Maker Faire at Barnes and Noble was a three-day event where members of our teams would demonstrate our FTC robots in the hopes of encouraging shoppers to support our teams by buying from the store. We also got the chance to demonstrate some of the robots for sale from Barnes and Noble. This event helped us raise money for our team as well as spread the word about FIRST.
STEM Expo
To spread the word about Hagerty Robotics, we brought an old FTC robot, our current robot, and two EV3 robots to demonstrate at a booth at the Ovideo Mall STEM Expo. We set up the EV3s to run a line-following program on our makeshift course, drove around our FTC robots, and displayed the Res-Q Game video. People from our team answered questions for anyone who was interested in FIRST or asked how the robots worked.
2015 Summer Camp
Our leadership team planned and held a three-day summer camp for anyone interested in the club. On the first day we taught the participants everything there is to know about FTC, the new android system, team fundamentals, and the basic design process. The next day, our focus was on CAD and beginning to build mini competition robots. On the third day, the focus for the first half was programming, and during the second half we held the final competition - an original mini game that combined elements from Cascade Effect(2014) and Block Party(2013).