written in 2017 for the FTC Astromechs & the Kansas City Robotics Foundation. Certain sections have been excised or edited for privacy reasons.
Our team’s mission is to learn more about STEM and especially engineering through our involvement in FIRST, to build a consistent and competitive robot every year, and to share our FIRST experience with our larger Kansas City community.
As a team, we believe in being respectful to each other and to other teams, making sure that team members and not coaches are doing all the work, engaging in Coopertition with other teams, teaching others about what we have learned, displaying Gracious Professionalism, and above all else, always having fun no matter what happens on the competition field. These core values apply to both our FLL and FTC teams.
Historically a larger team, and often an all-boys’ team, we today have 12 student members of our FLL and FTC teams, including 5 female members. In the past we have also been a mostly robot-focused team, and in the past few years, we have been working hard to change our team and become strong in all areas of competition. As our team grows over this and future seasons, we plan to maintain these changes to our team culture while continuing to grow stronger and constantly improve.
This document was last updated in the week before the Missouri State Championship on February 24.
The Astromechs have existed as a robotics organization for over 10 years, although we have only been an FTC team for 9 seasons. Our team has always competed at a high level, as our FTC team have advanced to the Missouri State Championship every competition season that we have existed, and have advanced to the World Championship three times.
The team was formed by local community member and FIRST advocate Dan Justice as an FLL team, but quickly transitioned into FTC, and later into the hands of current head coach Ken Pugsley. At around the same time the team gained sponsorship by N2Robotics and the Kansas City Robotics Foundation and we were able to begin working in our current shop, located in the northern part of Kansas City, Missouri, near Parkville. The team has traditionally been of larger size for an FTC team, usually more than 10 members. At some points we have even fielded two teams, the second team always being run under our second, currently-defunct number, #5227. It is only in this season that we have had less than 10 members, changing our internal organization and methods. More recently, in the last few years, we transitioned an unofficially-affiliated FLL team into the hands of our current coaches and mentors and they began meeting in our shop as well, becoming officially a part of the Astromechs program.
Student team members represent many varying communities throughout the northern part of Kansas City including three public high schools, two public middle schools, and two homeschool groups. Without their FIRST experience, these students would never have met or learned to work together. One notable aspect of our team demographics is the changes in our gender ratio over the years. Though the Astromechs have traditionally been an all-boys’ team, in the 2015-16 season three female members were introduced onto that year’s ‘rookie training’ team (#5227), and now two of the three female members of the FTC team are in leadership positions on the team. In addition, our current FLL team has an even gender ratio, and we plan to continue working to maintain a more even gender ratio in the future.
Students in the Astromechs program:
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Our three coaches and mentors are all parents of team members and current or former STEM professionals. They are all professionally involved with at least one of our sponsor companies. Most notably, coach Sindie Pugsley is the CEO of the Kansas City Robotics Foundation, and mentor Steve Penrod is the CTO of Mycroft AI.
Our current sponsors include:
In addition, we are in the process of establishing relationships with many other local stores and have applied for several grants for education and youth development in the area through the Kansas City Robotics Foundation.
Currently, the team is run with a leadership team of three student leaders. Name removed acts as our current Chief Technical Officer (CTO), and is in charge of robot development and buying parts. Name removed acts as Chief Operations Officer (COO), and is in charge of organizing our Notebook, agile development use, and outreach events. Name removed acts as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), and is in charge of our budget and marketing. Since the team is so small, we find it irrational to divide down further into any sub-leadership roles.
The team also subscribes to a system of having ‘shop roles’ and ‘competition roles’. Shop roles include builder, programmer, and our self-named ‘CAD guy’. Competition roles include drive team, pit boss, and scouters. Each team member will take on different shop roles and competition roles which may or may not have any relation to one another.
The current method of management is a system of agile development tracked in our Notebook. At the beginning of the year, we write out a series of achievable, measurable long-term goals called Epics. The team’s Epics for the 2017-18 season are:
We work in two-week (typically four-practice) increments called Sprints. Each Sprint, we plan ahead to figure out who will do what tasks for the Sprint and what those tasks will be. If a task doesn’t help us to achieve one of our Epics, we can either reconsider our Epics for the season, or reconsider whether we actually need to be doing that task. For each meeting, we write an agenda in the Notebook and take notes on any discussions for later reference. After the meeting, team members may add details in the Notebook on what they did that meeting if they feel it’s necessary.
Our Outreach mission is to reach kids and educate them about STEM and FIRST. We value quality interactions over quantity of interactions, preferring to leave a lasting and personal impact on kids’ lives. We want to teach kids valuable information about STEM and inspire interest in STEM through our outreach activities. Because we believe in the mission of FIRST and because it has personally impacted us so much, we also want to both inspire interest in FIRST in those who are of an age to participate, and foster already-established interest in FIRST. Our Outreach projects that we have done so far this year include:
We also have many alumni spread throughout the US, many of whom are going into engineering and STEM fields at schools such as Purdue University, Georgia Technical Institute, and Missouri Science and Technology. Several of these alumni have returned during this season to visit the shop, see our robot, and give us advice for the season.
Our plan is to develop two robots in the 2017-18 Relic Recovery season. The first bot, named M1ttens, will compete in qualifiers and meets, build off of technology we already know how to use, and hopefully advance the team to the Missouri State Championship. The second bot, named Scorpius, will be more heavily researched to find the best solution to each in-game challenge, and will likely be developed over much of the season, and will be designed in CAD ahead of its being built. Hereafter, both robots will be referred to by their current nicknames.
Because the team has great familiarity with systems like tank drives, simple intake systems, and drawer-slide lifters, M1ttens is mostly reliant on these old, well-tested systems. M1ttens is no demo bot, nor a prototype, but instead is meant to be a consistent and competitive bot that will take us through all meets and qualifiers that it has to. M1ttens began its build process in Sprint 2 of the season and was in a competitive state before our first meet, Olathe Northwest Classic, on January 13th.
Meanwhile, while it was possible that Scorpius would rely on our tried-and-true systems, the primary concern with Scorpius was to find the best solution to the Relic Recovery challenge rather than the one we already know how to implement. Possible solutions we investigated for Scorpius included a vacuum intake and Mecanum wheels. Physical development on Scorpius began in Sprint 5 of our build season and it was completed in Sprint 9 just before the Blue Valley CAPS Qualifier on Jan. 20th.
Currently, the majority of the Astromechs’ funding comes from dues paid by team members and sponsorship by the Kansas City Robotics Foundation. Last year, the team spent almost $10,000 on our competition, and actively raised only about 10% of that money through means other than the aforementioned ones. Through a combination of fundraising, sponsorships, and gifts in kind, we aim to raise $2,000 of our costs this year, and if costs are kept down, this could amount to covering over 25% of our season costs.
This three-pronged plan begins with sponsorships. In past years the Astromechs have not pursued sponsorships because ultimately member dues and funding from our main sponsor, the Kansas City Robotics Foundation, have proved sufficient to run the team. However, more local sponsors would help us increase financial stability and possibly help us cut costs for team members, making the team more accessible for new members. This year, we wish to establish at least two more sponsorship relations with local companies, thus increasing our professional relations and our income. This goal has already been reached in our new relationships with Citibank and Westlake Ace Hardware on Antioch Rd, so we hope to continue to establish sponsor relationships as necessary throughout the rest of the season.
The second part of the plan is about fundraising. We have infrequently pursued fundraising opportunities such as holding robotics classes with N2Robotics, having fundraising nights at restaurants and accepting donations. However, attempts to run and market these events have never been substantial, and so we have never made much money. This year, we plan to run at least one successful fundraising event which will have at least some community attendance outside of Astromechs friends and family, and to establish practices to keep these events running in future seasons to make things easier on future team members. This goal has not yet been met, but we have several ideas for different events that we could run to fulfill this goal, including dinners, raffles, and classes.
Finally, the third part of the plan is about gifts-in-kind. Traditionally, a very large part of our budget has paid for food, whether this is for providing lunch and dinner during all-day practices or just snacks during regular practices. The idea is that we can get some local restaurants, grocery stores, and bakeries to donate some food items for team events and practices so that we can keep food costs down throughout the season. This frees up more of our budget for robot parts and establishes some better community relations. We plan to get food donated for at least one team event this season. This goal has already been reached as we got Lamar’s Donuts given to our team for a much-reduced price to resell at our meets.
Through these methods, we plan to not only bring costs down somewhat, but also to raise twice as much money as we did last year. In this way we will hopefully raise up to 26% of our costs.
In the next FTC season after Relic Recovery, half of the current FTC team will be seniors. These team members all hold leadership or otherwise essential positions on the team that will need to be replaced. In the current season, younger members of the team are being trained to take over positions that will be emptied in the future by being taught various building and programming skills. However, much of our future sustainability comes from our FLL team.
Next year, we expect that at least 4 students will be joining our FTC teams from either our own FLL team or other local FLL teams. These students are already expressing interest in learning about the essential roles that will be left behind when half of our current team graduates. Currently our FLL team is meeting in the off-season to learn essential robotics skills and to eventually start learning the basics of FTC. Next season, we will continue to train them in how we run the team so that in the season after that they can take over.
In addition, we are hoping to field an FLL team again next year. Some of the students joining our FTC team from FLL may also continue in FLL at the same time, while some FLL students may simply stick with FLL. We plan to recruit more from both local elementary and middle schools and from local homeschool groups to find students interested in advancing their STEM education by joining a FIRST team. In addition, thanks to our good relationship with the local Cub Scout pack #247, we hope to recruit from their ranks. As usual, we will also be looking for any potential additions to our FTC team from any source.
To help with recruitment, we are considering starting a scholarship program through the Kansas City Robotics Foundation to help cover participation and travel fees for potential members who would not otherwise be able to afford participating on the team. We anticipate that this will make recruiting for both teams easier as we have lost several recruits in the past because fees were too high for their families to manage. In addition, by moving more of the costs onto this scholarship program in the future, we will make continuing participation easier for existing team members.
In the future, we plan to maintain relations with all current sponsors, including continuing to host and attend our annual events (Maker Faire, Camp Tongawood) in order to maintain our current financial position and current resources. In addition, we plan to diversify our sponsor base by reaching out to our community of businesses and community leaders more frequently, and to continue to increase the number of our small-scale, personalized Outreach events to make an even bigger impact on our Kansas City community.