Ontario Science Center: Robots Rule Weekend

On the 21st of November OTHS Red Devils were at the Ontario Science Center to demo our robot to hundreds of children and adults. With us were two other FIRST Robotics teams who we worked with to show the audience what FIRST Robotics is all about. We had children of both genders that were very intrigued by the robots and got to see them up close. We answered numerous questions and we received a lot of interest from everyone that attended. This event turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for us to spread the message of engineering and technology and we hope to do it again in the future.

Oakville Santa Claus Parade

On November 20, team 1334 took part in the annual Oakville Santa Claus Parade. It was the first year that the team participated in the parade and it was a perfect, blue sky, mild temperature day; we couldn't have asked for a better one! Some team members walked alongside the float entertaining the crowd by spelling “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays!” with letters worn on their fronts and backs and handing out candy. But it was the float that stole the show. The theme this year was movies and of course, famous robots from the big screens made a guest appearance on our float including Optimus Prime, Wall-E, and C-3PO. But the real show stopper was a life-size model of R2D2 made by our very own build team. The team worked long and hard to make sure everything was finished and ready on time, and in the end it was worth all the effort to see the looks of pure joy and enchantment on the faces of the children in the audience. It was priceless!

UPDATE: We tied with White Oaks Secondary School for the Best School Float Award!

FLL Practice Tournament a Great Success!

On November 13, team 1334 hosted a FIRST Lego League practice tournament at Oakville Trafalgar High School for 5 FLL teams that will competing in regional FLL tournaments over the next few weeks. Local teams and the Pretty River Predators from Collingwood joined us to perfect their missions and hone their presentation skills with thoughtful and supportive judging from our team members and mentors. Mrs. Peggy Scott joined us as head referee for the matches, and we concluded our day with a presentation from the Professional Engineers for Oakville which introduced the use of robots in biomedical engineering and a demonstration of the 1334 robots. Congratulations to all the FLL teams that participated for your hard work, and good luck at the FLL regionals!

Halloween 4 Hunger

Oakville Trafalgar High School’s Red Devil Robotics team organized a contest with the rest of OT to collect as much food as they could as a donation for the Fareshare food bank. In order to increase donations this year, every classroom at OTHS was encouraged to collect food and the class with the most food won a prize. The contest, Halloween for Hunger, has filled an entire trailer of food from top to bottom including canned foods, dry pasta and other non-perishable items to help the food bank.

Canadian National Exhibition Demo

On August 31st Team 1334 displayed our robot at the FIRST demonstration at the CNE along with nine other FRC teams and two FLL teams from Ontario. This year, we were indoors in the Direct Energy building and had a partial Breakaway field set up to simulate a competition. Many people came to our booth with questions about our robot construction, team events, and funding. Our robot performed superbly in front of thousands of observers all day, and we generated a lot of interest in our team and in FIRST.