Due to our successful visit at the Kid N Fun Festival last season, our team felt that it was appropriate for us to attend for a second year. The annual Kids ‘N Fun Festival is a multi-cultural festival, hosted by the Taiwanese Cultural and Sports Association, dedicated to children of all ages. The purpose of the festival was to showcase a variety of activities, games, performances, and international delicacies to the Cupertino community. Our team set up a booth in the science and technology facet of the event to showcase our 2017-2018 robot in action as well as a 3D pen station.
We invited team 12635, Kuriosity Robotics, to join us at the event and to share a playing field. Our team attended many of the same tournaments last year and wanted to spend the day working together to reach out to the Cupertino community.
Several members from both teams collaborated in order to figure out an efficient booth arrangement and different activities that we would present. Collectively, we decided to lay out 2 wooden boards that we put on top the grass in front of our adjacent booths to provide a stable, flat surface and to form a “stage” where we would display our playing field. The display consisted of the ¼ of a playing field, the field parameters, 2 crypto boxes, 12 foam blocks (enough to fill both crypto boxes), and a relic mat.
At our booth, we decided to host a 3D pen station that allowed kids to draw out their own designs or trace any of the prepared designs. We placed all of the outlines underneath a sheet of parchment paper in order to make detaching the 3D drawings slightly easier. Members monitoring the station sat inside the booth to assist the drawings and children would sit on a bench outside of the booth. On the adjacent side of the booth, we displayed posters about our team, our engineering notebook, and a few of our trophies. Additionally, a member standing next to the presentation facet of our booth answered any questions that spectators had about our team.
Throughout the festival, the drivers of both our team and Kuriosity hosted casual games to simulate a competition match. Following each match, they would host driver demonstrations that allowed curious kids to drive our robot. Our collaboration with Kuriosity Robotics demonstrated FIRST’s emphasis on gracious professionalism because it allowed our teams to reach past the competition aspect of FTC and focus on exchanging ideas and forming friendships.