From left RoboSpartans team members Timothy Ha, Benjamin Marks, Daniel Michaels, Ryan Payne, Douglas Hotvedt, Gwyneth LaMarche and Aidan Uvanni.
RoboSpartan Ryan Payne joins a long-distance discussion with teams from California, Texas and New York.
(New Hartford, NY – Oct. 2014) An afterschool robotics program in New Hartford recently expanded its reach to students around the World. The RoboSpartans robotics team developed the FTC TEC Network, a resource for high school students participating in the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics.
The FTC TEC Network currently connects over 60 robotics teams in 16 States and 4 Countries. Networked teams share their knowledge and gain valuable contacts that they hope will last throughout their careers. Teams meet through Google Hangouts, community postings and independent online chats. Teams range from small basement based groups, like the RoboSpartans, to large school supported technology clubs.
According to RoboSpartan team member and network administrator Aidan Uvanni, “We’ve seen the value in international collaboration. Our network allows students to easily collaborate, communicate and learn with each other. We can reach anywhere there’s a FIRST Tech Challenge team. That’s a possibility of making friends with around three thousand teams. It’s just starting to become easier to comprehend.”
The RoboSpartans see the network not only as a tool for teams to use now, but as a way of establishing connections for future careers.
Almost five years ago, the RoboSpartans FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics team made it their mission to help robotics grow here in Central New York. When they began in high-school level robotics, they were the very first team within a 50-mile radius of Utica. Each season the team added more travel to their schedule while promoting robotics through thousands of hours of volunteering, demonstrations and presentations. For their third season, the RoboSpartans became the first local robotics team to attend the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship. As one of 128 teams representing 11 countries, the RoboSpartans met made a number of new friends and reconnected with teams they met years earlier.
In 2012, the RoboSpartans established a local network of teams with the Central New York FTC Team Consortium, known as CNY+. The group meets monthly at SUNY Poly and functions much like a club, but without actual membership or formality. FIRST Tech Challenge teams from Albany to Syracuse have participated in programs set up through the consortium including season kick-offs, workshops and scrimmages.
The team’s 2013 project, TEC 1500, strengthened their alliance with two other 2013 FTC World Championship robotics teams – one in Jamaica and the other in Texas. TEC-1500 is the abbreviated name for their Team Engineering Collaboration. Fifteen-hundred represents the approximate distance between each team.
Throughout last year, the teams collaborated and shared robot designs, parts, robot test results, and tournament feedback. The project gave teams experiences similar to multi-national engineering firms including dealing with different cultures, time zones, and team processes. TEC-1500 teams met weekly for over 12 months. Word quickly spread about their networking project. Local teams as well as those in other areas of New York and beyond expressed an interest in joining in and adding their own contacts. In late August, the RoboSpartans expanded TEC-1500, creating the now global FTC TEC Network.
The RoboSpartans began in the FIRST program in 2008. FIRST- For Recognition of Science and Technology, offers a series of robotics programs for students aged 6 through 18. The RoboSpartans started as a FIRST LEGO League (FLL) team with a couple of interested parents and a group of five 8 to 12 year olds from New Hartford.
In 2 seasons they attended 10 tournaments including a United States Open Championship in Ohio and a World Festival in Georgia. They were the only FIRST LEGO League team in New York State to be chosen as a Core Values Ambassador, a designation given to only 15 teams out of the over 6,000 registered teams in 2009. They placed a respectable 48th out of 86 teams the 2010 World Festival in Atlanta.
Upon their return from Georgia, the RoboSpartans moved into FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), one of 2 high school level FIRST programs. They began their rookie FTC season as the only team in Central New York.
Twelve FTC teams now call Central New York home. As an FTC team, the RoboSpartans have accumulated over a dozen trophies in 4 seasons. At the 2013 FTC World Championship in St. Louis, the RoboSpartans placed 4th for the highest prize in their league, the Inspire Award. Shortly after returning from St. Louis, the team graduated two team members who are now pursuing technical fields in college.
In May of this year, the team began its 5th FTC season with 7 students from New Hartford, Utica and Whitesboro schools. They’ll host their 2nd annual robotics qualifier on Sunday, December 7, 2014 in the SUNY Poly Field House. 24 teams from the Mohawk Valley and beyond will participate in a full day of robotics action.
The RoboSpartans operate under the 501(c)(3) of the Mohawk Valley Applied Technology Corporation (MVATC) in Utica. More information on the RoboSpartans and the FTC TEC Network can be obtained through the websites: www.RoboSpartans.org and www.FTCTECNetwork.org.