Community Corner
NHS Robotics Team say "Thanks.."
Dear Needham Community,
We, the members of the NHS Robotics Club, wanted to thank the community for all of the support we have received. We would not be able to have advanced nearly as far in the competitions we participated in throughout the year without their help. This year, our club, made up of two teams, a boys team, “T-10”, and a girls team, the “HackHers”, competed in the First Tech Challenge for the third consecutive year. The club attended two qualifier competitions this season. At the first the girls finished in second place. In the second qualifier, the two teams did very well and faced each other in the finals, with the boys coming in second and the girls coming in first. Both teams advanced to the state competition, where the boys placed seventeenth and the girls placed tenth. We are proud of our performance this competition season and look forward to refining our engineering abilities next year, where we will try to advance from states to the new super-regional level of competition.
None of this would have been possible without the support of our sponsors. We would like to thank Needham’s own Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC), which has sponsored us for several years, and this year increased its sponsorship to help create the Girls Team. In addition, PTC has supplied us with copies of its engineering software products Windchill, Creo, and Mathcad. Windchill is an web-based program that allows team members to access important documents anywhere, and Creo is a 3D modeling software that we used to model our entire robot as we built it. Mathcad is like an electronic engineering notebook, great for organizing and presenting mathematical calculations.
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We would also like to recognize Veryst Engineering, another Needham company, which also increased its contributions this year to support our new team. Stuart Brown of Veryst recently hosted several students at a recent American Association for Quality function at iRobot, an eye-opening opportunity that we appreciated greatly. Needham Bank and Raytheon Corporation supported the girls’ team this year as well, and their contributions were pivotal in starting the new team. Furthermore, we had material and financial support from Olin College, Home Depot, The Needham Rotary Club, Math Works, the Needham High School PTC, and the Needham High School Student Council. Finally, we are thankful to our principal, Dr. Pizzi, and our superintendent, Dr. Gutekanst, for providing us their support and the space in which we build, test, and store our robots, and to the Needham Education Foundation, who provided the grant to purchase a 3D printer, which will expand the production capabilities of the club greatly.
The robotics club would not operate without such strong support, and we are glad that we have been able to give back to the Needham community. We have hosted multiple groups, including girl scout troops, at the High school for demonstrations of our robots and also taken our robots to give demonstrations and talks at Needham Extended Day Program and a local Boy Scout troop. We held an informational session for FIRST Lego League, a robotics competition for children in grades four through eight, and we hope to get some of our members involved in mentoring FLL teams next year. Ultimately, the Needham robotics teams hope to develop students’ interest in Science , Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM) and Computer Programming through robotics. Best of all, Needham Robotics promotes “gracious professionalism” and teamwork, skills which are important for every student, regardless of whether or not they become an engineer.Signed, the members of the NHS Boys and Girls Robotics Teams.
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(Like us on Facebook “Needham Robotics”; website: http://bit.ly/wbRVc4 ; questions/comments: hans_batra@needham.k12.ma.us)
