The Mount Vernon Robotics team competed Sunday at the FIRST Tech Challenge qualifying tournament in Davenport. Both teams were successful and both have qualified for the Iowa-FTC state tournament on February 25 in Iowa City. Each team was nominated for multiple awards and each team was awarded one. The teams receive awards at FTC Tournaments in recognition of their achievements in robot design, creativity, innovation, team performance, outreach, and enthusiasm.
Team 458 Activate Go Initiative!:
Team 458 was nominated for 4 awards: the Inspire Award; the Motivate Award; the Rockwell Collins Innovate Award; and the Connect Award. They were awarded the Inspire Award, which is the highest level of achievement at an FTC competition and it qualified them to compete in the Iowa State competition in February. The Inspire award incorporates elements of all other award categories.
Team 3549 Classified:
Team 3549 was nominated for 5 awards: The Inspire Award; Rockwell Collins Innovate Award; the Connect Award; the Think Award; and the PTC Design Award. They were awarded the Connect Award and were runner up for the Inspire Award. They also were selected to compete in the tournament and they made all the way to the finals.
Check out some videos from the competition:
Video of Team 458 receiving Inspire Award:
Video of Team 3549 receiving the Connect Award:
Inspire Award
FIRST Tech Challenge Inspire Award
The Inspire Award is the most prestigious FTC award, and is given to the team that truly embodied the ‘challenge’ of the FTC program. The team that receives this award is chosen by the judges as having best represented a role model FIRST Tech Challenge Team. The team that receives this award is a top contender for all other judging categories and is a strong competitor on the field.
Judges should use match performance, observations made during interviews and in the pit area, and the team’s Engineering Notebook as equal factors in determining the winner of this award.
The Inspire Award winning team will receive an invitation to advance to the next level event. If presented at a Qualifying Tournament, the team will receive an automatic invitation to participate in a Championship Tournament. If presented at a Championship Tournament, the team will receive an automatic invitation to participate at the World Championship Event.
Connect Award
This award is given to the team that most connected with their local community and the engineering community. A true FIRST team is more than a sum of its parts, and recognizes that their schools and communities play an essential part to their success. The recipient of this award is recognized for helping the community understand FIRST, the FIRST Tech Challenge, and the team itself. The team that wins this award is aggressively reaching out to engineers and exploring the opportunities available in the world of engineering, science and technology. In addition, this team has a clear fundraising goal and plan to achieve that goal.
Motivate Award
This award celebrates the team that exemplifies the essence of the FIRST Tech Challenge competition through team spirit and enthusiasm. They show their spirit through costumes and fun outfits, a team cheer or outstanding spirit. This team has also made a collective effort to make FIRST known throughout their school and community.
Rockwell Collins Innovate Award
The Rockwell Collins Innovate Award celebrates a team that not only thinks outside the box, but also has the ingenuity and inventiveness to make their designs come to life. This award is given to the team that has the most innovative and creative robot design solution to any or all specific field elements or components in the FIRST Tech Challenge game. Elements of this award include elegant design, robustness, and ‘out of the box’ thinking related to design. This award may address the design of the whole robot, or of a sub-assembly attached to the robot. The creative component must work consistently, but a robot does not have to work all the time during matches to be considered for this award. The team’s Engineering Notebook should be marked with journal entries to show the design of the component(s) and the team’s robot in order to be eligible for this award, and entries should describe succinctly how the team arrived at that solution.
PTC Design Award
The PTC Design Award recognizes design elements of the robot that are both functional and aesthetic. All successful robots have innovative design aspects however the PTC Design Award is presented to teams that incorporate industrial design elements into their solution. These elements could simplify the robot giving it a clean look, decorate the robot, or otherwise express the creativity of the team. The winning design should not compromise the practical operation of the robots but compliment its purpose.
