Onshape Robots to the Rescue was a challenge provided by a popular Computer-Aided Design Company, in tandem with The First Tech Challenge and The First Robotics League. In this challenge, teams were tasked with creating robots that would attempt to solve some sort of current and prevalent problem in our world today. Out of over 151 teams in the world, we placed 40th!
For our robot, we tried to solve three problems under the category of the ventilator. These three problems were: a lack of ventilators, contamination when doctors touch and use ventilators, large amounts of time it takes nurses and doctors to wheel around ventilators. To solve the first problem, we worked on building ventilators that were open source and could be created out of FTC parts and technologies; by doing this, we made it easier for hospitals to get and use ventilators. To solve the second problem, contamination, we tried to make the ventilators automated and moved autonomously. By doing this, we used the knowledge that we had gained from the First Tech Challenge and had applied it to a real scenario. Lastly, our solution to the third problem was as a result of our solution to the second; by making these ventilators autonomous and less dependant on doctors, doctors/nurses wouldn’t have to dedicate a large amount of time to wheel ventilators upstairs and through hallways just to reach other patients. After establishing our solutions to these problems, we got to CADing our robot. We worked over two weeks to sketch, design, and then refine our models once again to make sure everything worked well and was in order. At the end of these three weeks, the team was quite happy with the final product; we had created an autonomous ventilator that could be made out of FTC/hobby robotics parts.