AI Spectra Speaker - June 26 - 27  2021

Over the summer, our team partnered with AI Spectra, a national outreach program dedicated to bringing emerging technology to middle school girls, to facilitate and host three speaker panels. Our first speaker, Alessandro Baretta, a
graduate of the Politecnico de Milano in Italy, demonstrated the applications of artificial intelligence in high-frequency trading, explained how ethical AI is created by having secure data sources, and gave advice for the startup life cycle.
Our second speaker, Kumaresh Pattabiraman, the Senior Director of Product at LinkedIn, explained how AI is being used to mitigate bias in job hiring and recruitment at major companies in LinkedIn's new recommendations model.
Lastly, our final speaker, Mrs. Renee Niemi, a former senior VP at Logitech and Google, explained how to get start careers in STEM by being self-driven learners and by forming mentorships with others in a field of interest.​

Mini Podcast Series - June 15 - July 17 2021

​After numerous brainstorming sessions on outreach projects that would succeed not only in spite of the pandemic but because of it, we came up with the idea of creating a podcast to give a peek at FIRST robotics to outsiders and give insights to new members. By the end of the podcast series, we had interviewed Fernando Piva from FTC Team 14321 Automatons of Olympus, the founding members of AI Spectra, and the founders of Hack on Track, a program run by high schoolers whose goal is to educate high school students in programming through free, mentored lessons. Over 3 weeks, we interviewed the groups on their experiences over the past year, highlighting the biggest challenges they faced and the changes they made to overcome them.

Leland Bridge Exhibition - August 21, 2021

We reached out to Leland Bridge, a parent club of our school which helps Chinese-American students and their families with enhancing their educational experiences, to do a demo at their start of the year event. We started by giving a quick presentation to all the parents and students at the event about FIRST, FTC, as well as other FIRST programs and how they could get involved. At this demo, we set up some posters showing the different iterations of the previous years’ robot, to show how we designed our mechanisms to solve the challenge. Also, we provided a signup sheet for those who were interested in joining our team. Unfortunately, we were unable to drive around any of our robots as it was an outdoor event, but we were able to show the different functions of the physical robot when stationary.

Github Workshop - September 18, 2021

​During the season kickoff event, our team hosted a programming workshop. This workshop aided rookie FTC teams so they could learn the basics of GitHub and Android Studios. We taught the basics of Git and the variety of operations in the program. This allows multiple people to simultaneously work on the same code, which makes the programming of the robot much more efficient. After we discussed where teams can store and access their code through the use of a remote repository, we introduced Git Kraken, a program that simplifies Git and provides an easy way to test the code. Finally, we talked about Android Studio and how it allows for code to be accessed on phones, which is how the robot moves. Aidan presented this workshop, while Andrea and Ruhan helped to manage the students and answer any questions.

​Make a Game Workshop - October 7, 2021

In this Make A Game Workshop, we showed students how to use Scratch to code their very own game. First, we introduced them to Scratch, a block-based programming language. We started by guiding them to create their own account, and then went through the UI of Scratch and the purpose of each block. Once they all created accounts, we taught them basics like how to move the “sprite” when the green flag was pressed, how to use the costume tab, and how they could import images off the internet to make them into characters in their program. Scratch is fairly simple, since it is block-based, and none of the students had to memorize any syntax. To further their interest in programming, and using scratch to create games, we provided them with projects to work on in the future as well as the slide deck to the workshop we taught. 
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​TinkerCAD Workshop - October 8, 2021

During this event, we taught students the basics of TinkerCAD, a simple, browser-based, CAD website. We begun by leading them through forming their TinkerCAD account. Next, we introduced them to the concept of CAD, along with some of its uses. All of the students present had little to no experience with CAD, so we made sure to explain each concept slowly and clearly. We presented many of the basic features of TinkerCAD and gave the students time to practice and master each skill. We also set aside time for questions if any of the students had any concerns or fell behind. After establishing that each student fully understood how to use the program, we set aside 20 minutes for each student to CAD their own creative project. At the end of the workshop, we had volunteer students present their creation and explain how they made each part of the CAD, as well as how they approached the project. Ultimately, the students were able to design creative and unique projects using TinkerCAD. ​

Festival of Thanks Exhibition - November 14, 2021

​We set up a joint booth with our sister FRC team, 604 Quixilver, at a local festival run by the Almaden Valley Women's Club. There, we showcased our past robots and spoke with community members of all ages about FIRST robotics and STEM in general. Festival attendees of widely varying ages and levels of STEM involvement spoke to members of our team, asking questions about everything from our engineering process to the structure of our competition season, from the history of us and our sister team to the ways that STEM and robotics programs are already available to elementary school students. We were also able to show the capabilities and functions of the output and input of our robot from two years ago.

Boy Scouts Exhibition - November 20, 2021

In order to reach out to even more people, we decided that doing a robotics demo for our local Boy Scouts Troop, Troop 606, would be a great way to educate people about FIRST, and robotics in general. During the demo, not only did we teach the troop members about our team and different FIRST robotics competitions, but we also gave any volunteers a chance to get hands on experience working with the robot by driving it around to test its various mechanisms. We explained the concepts of Coopertition and Gracious Professionalism, and how they could relate to both our team, FIRST and Boy Scout values. We explained the goal of last year's game, and what mechanisms we implemented in order to best compete in last year’s game. ​

Python Workshop - February 22-24 2022

Utilizing Google Collab and Zoom, we held a three-day-long virtual workshop with our local library to teach middle schoolers about the basics of Python, a popular programming language. Students were introduced to print, data types, variables, as well as functions on the first day of the workshop. On the second day of the workshop, our team taught participants about arrays and lists, and advanced Python programming in order to teach them more complex applications. On the last day of the workshop, we assigned a Final Project, where students created their own interactive battleship game in order to demonstrate how well they understood Python and its applications. The workshop concluded with the students presenting and sharing their battleships games and reviewing everything they learned from the three days of activities and lessons.

Pre-Regionals Scrimmage - February 26, 2022

A small group of our team members, just enough to form a drive team and have mechanical and programming support, traveled to Fremont to visit team FTC 14473 Future for a scrimmage. Six teams were present in total, which was enough for several practice matches to be held with full alliances. Throughout the afternoon, we got to see how our programs for autonomous and strategies for teleop and endgame interact with those of other teams, to prepare for regionals. We took the time to look at the other robots present, as they all had original and innovative designs and mechanisms we could take inspiration from. Additionally, programmers from our team and from team FTC 14473 Future were very excited to see each others' autonomous code, and hours were spent discussing the best methods for path following.

CAD Workshop with UCSC Battlebots - March 19-20, 2022

​We helped the UCSC Battlebots team organize and advertise a CAD workshop. The workshop aimed to help FTC teams improve their Solidworks skills and learn hot to use advanced tools. The workshop was split into two days. The first day went over the basics of Solidworks such as Sketching, Features of Solidworks, as well as 3D printing tips and tricks! The second day covered topics such as Assembly, Evaluation, CAM, Simulation, and Publication. These will be more advanced topics in Solidworks and will be extremely beneficial to learn.