RoboGOATS
(Robo Greatest Of All TimeS)
FTC Team # 16113
Business Plan
Executive Summary
Team Info:
Goals: Some of our goals for this year are to improve the team’s ranking and learn more about engineering and programming. We wanted to work quicker this year so we could accomplish more and try to have a polished robot by the time the competitions started.
Mission Statement: We RoboGOATs strive to make learning fun. We engage with local communities and schools to be FIRST ambassadors and build relationships with neighborhood kids and communities. We RoboGOATs practice gracious professionalism and promote a welcoming environment to all team members.
Date Team Began: 2019
Team and Program Summary: RoboGOATS was founded originally as The Omega Squad in 2019, but split off into its own team this year. The current team has one coach and is run by 5 students from the local area.
Location of the Team and Current Team Sponsors:
Location: Bothell, WA
Sponsors:
Team Impact/Outreach: Over the summer of 2020, RoboGOATS and our sister team, The Omega Squad, went to a local community children’s business fair to spread the word about FIRST and hopefully gain some new students. We talked to a lot of excited students that day and explained what FTC is and how they could get involved. We were also reached out to by a local military division that wanted us to help fix their robot. While we couldn’t fix the robot fully, it was a great learning experience for the team to see how robots can be actively used in the real world.
Summary of Team Growth: The team has evolved from a small group of kids working in a garage to an experienced and focused team. We have all learned how to efficiently put together a prototype and rework it into a full design through lots of trial and error. We’ve also learned a lot more about Java programming and machine learning. The team started out not very strong but has risen to have an effective robot and developed skills.
Summary of Future Team Plans: In the future, we plan to do a lot more outreach and community events, especially during the summer. We hope to teach more people about FIRST and help out some local FLL teams so they can be excited for FTC as well. We also plan to focus on sponsorships and building strong relationships with local STEM communities.
Team Overview
Team History: RoboGOATS was started originally as one big team, called The Omega Squad in 2019. Over the 2020 and 2021 seasons, we gained new team members and decided to split the original team into two. Now, our team is formally known as the RoboGOATS. In August of 2019, a group of students was brought together by our coach, Babu Govindarajan for the Skystone season of FTC. We learned a lot about FIRST that year, through various student-led presentations of the rules and terms. This was our first year, so we were just learning and testing our skills with the basics of engineering and programming. We were nominated for some awards and ended up getting 3rd place in the Think Award category at the Interleague. We ended the year with a lot more knowledge than we started out with, and were ready to take on the challenge the next year. In August and September of 2020, we began to plan out our goals and design overview for the robot. We overcame many big challenges with the design but ended the year with a polished robot and refined skills. We held a big outreach meeting with local members of the community to teach them about FIRST, FTC, and our robot. It was a success and a big milestone for our team.
Student Team Members:
The team consists of 5 students, 3 female students, and 2 male students. Most of us are local kids that go to the same district and some of the same schools. Others of us come from areas close by. We don’t let those differences affect us while we’re working, instead, we use them as a tool to see different perspectives and learn new skills. It’s also important to note that 60% of the team is young women in junior high and high schools. Our team has a great connection to women working in STEM communities, and we hope to do more sponsorships with businesses like these in the future.
FLL Awards: FTC team members prior to joining FTC team, also participated FLL and the team own the following awards:
Our Coaches
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Our coach, Dr. Srujana Karlapalem is a Physician Assistant Specialist in Bothell, Washington.
She graduated with honors from University Of Washington School Of Medicine in 2013.
Dr Srujana Karlapalem graduated with Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) from Gandhi Medical College, Secunderabad, India. Having more than 8 years of diverse experiences, especially in PHYSICIAN ASSISTANT,
Dr. Srujana Karlapalem affiliates with Providence Health System. She has been coaching First LEGO League teams for the last seven years and First Tech Challenge team for the last three years. |
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Our coach, Mr. Babu Govindarajan is working as Senior-Solution Architect with AT&T. He graduated with a Master of Engineering (Mechanical) from Guindy College of Engineering in 2000 and he also earned a Bachelor Degree in Civil and Structural Engineering. He has about twenty years of software development experience in India and the USA. He has been coaching First LEGO League teams for the last seven years and First Tech Challenge team for the last three years.
He teaches Java programming, Machine Learning using Tensorflow, Computer Vision and Robot Mechanism and attachments. |
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Team Management
Team Membership: To be a member of the team, the applicant must learn how our team works. We would have them come in and watch our team work on something on the engineering or programming team. Then we would have them pick which team seems more interesting, and start with that for now. Throughout this process, they would be meeting the whole team, mentors, and parents.
Team Structure: We have one Team Coach that oversees progress for all areas of our work and gives us tips and guidance when we need it. Our other Team Coach is in charge of advising and planning for the students. Our Team Captain has a similar role but is on the student side. We also have designated roles for engineering, programming, and driving. We like to sometimes switch out members to different positions so everyone can learn something new. Everyone on the team must contribute something to our Engineering Notebook, so we’ve divided up the work. We have a subdivision working on the Notebook/Portfolio, and another working on the Business Plan.
Some of us also took some time outside of class to create a website from scratch. These divisions help keep us organized and accomplish everything in a systematic way. The main builders for our team have stayed the same, sometimes switching out a member. They have worked together to build the base robot, prototypes, and final attachments. One team worked on the wheel attachment, while the other focused on an arm and claw to engage the team shipping element. While doing this, the programmers worked to create a program that would incorporate all of these mechanisms and revise it to work well with the drivers. The driving team always took a little time at the end of class to practice driving and testing out the program. By using this method, we were able to build our robot much faster than last year and overcome challenges quicker.
Strategic Planning Process/SWOT Analysis
Strengths:
Opportunities:
Weaknesses:
Threats:
Team Impact/Outreach
Lego Robotics Classes
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Over summer a member of our team partnering Omega Squad(Team #18015) did a lego robotics class teaching how to build EV3 robots and program using EV3 block programming. For one week straight we taught seven kids ages 7-12 for 2 hours a day how to build a simple base robot following the EV3 Mindstorm steps and program it to do basic functions such as moving forward and turning. We later taught them how to use different sensors such as the color and touch. They used the color sensor by sensing what color is in front of them and doing an action based on that color. They used the touch sensor by sensing them touching the sensor and doing an action based on that. On the very last day, each student programmed their robot to go through a maze made out of cups by using their skills with the robot, color sensor, and touch sensor. |
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Children Business Fair at Bothell, WA
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Before starting the 2021 season, our team and our sister team, the Omega Squad FTC Team # 18015, attended a Children’s Business Fair in our area. We had a booth with our robot and part of our field set for people to test. We talked to many people that day and got a lot of people interested in FIRST programs. This event was very beneficial to our team because we got some practice talking to others about our team, and we built up some relationships with our community. |
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At the start of the 2021 season, we were given a robot from the Seattle military to fix. We tried numerous times but couldn’t find a solution. Although we weren’t able to accomplish this task, it taught us about the uses of robots in the real world and problem-solving skills. RoboGOATS has had multiple different opportunities for outreach within our community that we’ve used to promote FIRST and teach others about robotics. Our first year in 2019, formerly known as the Omega Squad, was focused more on learning the basics of FTC and how to build and program a working robot. We didn’t do much outreach that year, except for helping out some local FLL teams every now and then. The next year in 2020, we were hit with a pandemic that limited our opportunities for outreach. We held online meetings to plan for outreach and community work. When we felt a little safer, we started to continue helping out the FLL teams again. That year, we held an online meeting where viewers could come see our robot and learn about us as a team and FIRST programs. After we demonstrated our robot, the viewers seemed very interested and started asking us many questions. It was a great way to connect with our community and learn how to present our ideas effectively. We could use this meeting as a method to practice speaking to the judges at future FTC events.
Future Plans
Some of our smaller plans for the future are to be more organized with our team structure and work faster to complete all basic attachments and programs for the 3 periods before the first league. Another one of our short-term goals is to create a bigger presence in the area around us. This can bring us some new team members, or even attract businesses. Our bigger plans include working more with the businesses around us and gaining sponsorships and mentors.
Action/Implementation Plan
We want more people to know about our team and what it’s doing. We plan to do this by advertising on social media and spreading the word about RoboGOATS. We can host meetings or events to bring people in and connect with our community. This should be a year-long project, that the whole team contributes to. Another one of our goals is to attract more businesses and Sponsors to our team. We plan to do this by first asking the team members if anyone they know can sponsor the team. Then, we can build stronger relationships with those businesses. Another strategy we want to use is to attend more business events, like the Children’s Business Fair we attended in the 2021 season, and find sponsors there. By finding these sponsors we can learn about funding and budgeting, which is something we hope to expand on in the future. We hope to start doing more things regarding companies early in the season and continue to meet with them throughout the season. We want the whole team to participate in this goal.
Team Budget
Team Income & Expenditure:
Additional Opportunities for Support: Mentors: We could use mentors for CAD, Finance, and Public Speaking. Many of our team members know some things here and there about CAD, but we want to add this to our list of skills by having a mentor come to teach us about CAD modeling. We also want to get better at managing our expenses and we could do that with a mentor. Public speaking is something we haven’t really practiced throughout our years, so it would be a good thing to have someone to practice with.
Sponsor Benefits
Bronze Benefits (25$ - 74$):
Silver Benefits (75$ - 149$):
Gold Benefits (150$ - 499$):
Diamond Benefits (500$+):
Team Fundraising Ideas
Current Team Fundraisers: In the summer of 2021, our team participated in a Children’s Business Fair to get more people excited about FIRST, bring awareness to our team, and hopefully raise some money. We talked to about 100 people that day, showing them our robot and letting them test drive it. Towards the end of the day, we received some donations from a local family that was very interested in our team and robot.
Future Team Fundraisers:
Why is Your Team Unique?
Our team consisted of members from 6th grade to 9th grade. Few of our team members have started robotics with Junior FLL and FL. We practice gracious professionalism everyday. Our team uses OnShape CAD software to create models and use it as part of the robot. We engage with our school district and kids in the neighborhood by conducting regular robotics classes and being FIRST ambassadors.
Team Contact Information
Website: www.robogoats.org
Team Email: teamrobogoats@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Robo-GOATs-FTC-16113-101474792297462
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/robogoats/?viewAsMember=true
Youtube: Bothell Robotics
Main Contacts:
Coach Name: Babu Govindarajan
Email: cg.babu@gmail.com
Phone: (425) 241-7667
Dates: Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
Times: Times vary
