Red Hot Chili Bots

the Red Hot Chili Bots from Marshall High School, and What is FIRST? To understand the purpose and goals of FIRST you first have to understand the goals of Engineering and then FIRST makes perfect sense. Simply stated, Engineering is a process for creative problem solving. Over 25 years ago Dean Kamen, among others, realized that the United States... was not developing sufficient graduates from STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) related fields to be competitive in the technical job market. Using his Engineering skills Dean looked at the situation as a problem and applied creative thinking to propose a solution. Dean asked, what do students like to do? and identified arena sports and rock concerts as popular entertainment. Dean took these two venues and added a technical challenge to inspire young students to choose to play in the domain of STEM. Take a look at the following two videos from the 21st Kickoff to hear Dean Kamen, Founder, talk about What is FIRST? and Dr. Woodie Flowers, Chief Engineer, talk about Why FIRST? . If you want to see a couple snapshots of what FIRST is all about, take a look at the above video. Our State Superintendent, Michael Flanagan, visited the Red Hot Chili Bots headquarters on February 18. A representative group of our team walked Mr. Flanagan through our program and demonstrated the essay editor tools we have been using to create our robot for this year. We also talked about the positive impact it has had on each of us. This year our team has accelerated in the use of Computer Automated Design (CAD) to design and validate many parts of our robot prior to building. It was fun to have the opportunity to talk with Mr. Flanagan about our successes.Read More