Zach, a 5-year veteran of the Manchester Machine Makers 4-H Club and FIRST Tech Challenge Team #16221 and a junior at Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester Vermont, was recognized at the Vermont State Championships held on Saturday March 7 at South Burlington High School in South Burlington, Vermont as one of two FIRST Tech Challenge Leadership Award Finalists representing Vermont.
This award is a significant recognition of Zach’s dedication and leadership on the team and for the FTC community. He and Miles Vernon were both recognized by the Manchester Machine Makers as Semi-Finalists. To be selected as a Finalist from across all teams in Vermont is an honor which can lead to future opportunities in STEAM.
Congratulations!
From FIRST: What is the FIRST® Leadership Award?
The FIRST® Leadership Award recognizes the dedication and individual contributions of outstanding secondary school students participating on FIRST® Tech Challenge or FIRST® Robotics Competition teams. Students in 10th or 11th grade are eligible to be nominated by their team for the FIRST Leadership Award for excelling in areas such as leadership, entrepreneurship, and dedication to advancing the mission of FIRST within their communities.
There are four (4) levels of the FIRST Leadership Award.
FIRST Leadership Award Semi-finalists – comprised of the two (2) students in their 10th or 11th school year* nominated by each team.
FIRST Leadership Award District Championship Semi-finalists (FIRST Robotics Competition only) – The students selected at District events to be interviewed at the District Championship for Finalist consideration.
FIRST Leadership Award Finalists – The students selected for each Regional and District Region.
FIRST Leadership Award Winners – comprised of the ten (10) FIRST Robotics Competition and ten (10) FIRST Tech Challenge students selected from the applicable FIRST Leadership Award Finalists.
The students who earn FIRST Leadership Award status as a Semi-finalist, Finalist or Winner, are great examples of student leaders who have led their teams and communities to increased awareness for FIRST and its mission, champion FIRST Core Values such as Inclusion, and embody Gracious Professionalism®. It is the goal the FIRST Leadership Award Winners will continue, post-award, as great leaders, student alumni, and advocates of FIRST.
In 2019, the Woodie Flowers Memorial Grant was established for FIRST Leadership Award Winners pursuing STEAM fields of study.
The kickoff for FIRST: AGE – DECODE now seems an age ago! We’ve been through the exploratory builds, design and build of robot V1 (Jimmy Sheutron) and then the design, CAD, and build of robot V2.
Liam, Zach, Miles (and Ben in spirit) with their Inspire Award 3rd place trophy at Vermont Regional ChampionshipsZach, Miles, Ben, and Liam with their Inspire Award runner-up trophy at the Norwich Qualifier
December saw a change of plans – V1 had some design flaws which would limit its capabilities, no matter how many improvements we made. So the team made a mid-season choice to return to the drawing board for a completely new design. It included mechanisms that could theoretically accomplish every challenge the game offered.
V1 went with us to compete in the Bennington Qualifiers, which we helped host along with the Cookie Clickers and the Bennington Bolts & Biscuits. He was slow but steady, and did very well for us, earning a name (Jimmy Sheutron)! It was the first competition day where we didn’t need to fix things in a hurry between matches, which felt pretty remarkable. A couple of teams came from neighboring states, showing off a whole different level of competition than our low-key Vermont region usually experiences. So that Qualifier was a really useful day for our team, teaching us how to play the game and giving us a clearer idea of what the robot ought to be able to do.
Exhilarated from Bennington, the team threw themselves into a round of improvements on V2, while still learning to code and refine Jimmy. We just barely decided to take V2 to the Northfield Qualifier, hosted at Norwich University. Given its Work-In-Progress state, it was very impressive. It showed off its potential as our drivers improved with each match, being chosen as an alliance partner for the playoffs. Additionally, the team came home with a second place in the Inspire Award, which is a real honor.
Inspire Award Criteria
The team that receives this award is a strong ambassador for FIRST programs and a role model FIRST team. This team is a top contender for many other judged awards and is a gracious competitor. The Inspire Award winner is an inspiration to other teams, acting with Gracious Professionalism® both on and off the playing FIELD. This team shares their experiences, enthusiasm, and knowledge with other teams, sponsors, their community, and the JUDGES. Working as a unit, this team will have shown success in performing the task of designing and building a ROBOT.
Team is able to describe, demonstrate, document, or display their experiences and knowledge to the JUDGES.
Team must submit a PORTFOLIO.
The Inspire Award celebrates the strongest qualities of all the judged awards. A team must be a strong contender for at least one award in each of the following judged award categories:
Machine, Creativity, and Innovation Awards,
Team Attributes Awards, and
Think Award
Team must be positive and inclusive, and each team member contribute to the success of the team.
Then, into the home stretch – with three weeks before the Vermont Regional Championships, and school vacation and travel, the team really put in the extra effort. They worked to refine the flywheel launcher, fabricate a lift mechanism, and tune RPMs vs. distance. Our chief code monkey wrote the Autonomous routine using both two-wheel + IMU odometry and the Limelight camera to localize with AprilTags. Our drivers practiced, and everyone pitched in to write an Engineering Portfolio that they could be proud of.
By the time the competition arrived, V2 could do everything reasonably well, and was a pretty interesting machine. It could intake artifacts (big wiffle balls) from anywhere on the field, drive with some nimbleness, index and sort the different colors of artifacts, recognize the AprilTag on the obelisk to determine which pattern to shoot; it could shoot three balls in pattern, in any order, or single balls of a specific color or any color. The drivers could set the flywheel to a near-target RPM or far-target RPM. The base was not so large that it would preclude any other robots from partially parking in the home base at the end of the game, allowing for a consistent full park + partial park score. It had a three-artifact autonomous routine that would also move appropriately, contributing to a Move Ranking Point in any match.
By midmorning, there were a great many “shoulder ducks” to be seen among other teams and volunteers as well, showing off our unique Manchester Machine Makers “got ducks?” style.
Qualifying rounds are always unpredictable, but the team gave a solid performance, ranking in the middle of the pack after five intense matches. V2 was easy to maintain, only needing fresh batteries between matches. With the code well-organized, we had the luxury of working on an enhanced autonomous during breaks without worry of breaking the main tele-op routine.
The judges were very busy throughout the competition and asked insightful questions, listening closely to the team as they explained everything from their brainstorming process to their outreach plans. With the careful documentation of V1 and V2, and obviously knowledgeable team members, the judges awarded third place in the Inspire Award to the team, out of 25 teams!
Topping it all off, our most senior member, Zachary Lindenberg,was selected as one of only two Finalists from Vermont for the FIRST Leadership Award.
FIRST Leadership Award
The FIRST® Leadership Award recognizes the dedication and individual contributions of outstanding secondary school students participating on FIRST® Tech Challenge or FIRST® Robotics Competition teams. Students in 10th or 11th grade are eligible to be nominated by their team for the FIRST Leadership Award for excelling in areas such as leadership, entrepreneurship, and dedication to advancing the mission of FIRST within their communities.
Everyone on the team was happy to see the competition season come to such a successful close. While we’re not planning to go to any further competitions, we are planning to participate in 4-H Communications Day on March 21st in Rutland. We’ll also have another Robotics Day at the Manchester Community Library, and we plan to bring a robotics activity to the State Fair late in the summer, before the next competition season begins.
Come see us at our events to acquire your very own rubber ducky to ride on your shoulder!
Manchester Machine Makers at Lamoille Union High School
Today was the day! We all travelled north to attend the Vermont State Championship FIRST Tech Challenge competition, where the team had a successful and eventful day.
It was a rough start- Rufus, our robot, suddenly began having connection issues, switch problems, and more! We had to return at the last minute to finally pass the field inspection, but even after we thought it was working, the next thing we knew it had stopped again. With the help of the Mansfield Mechanics United, our first alliance partner, we learned that the way we had connected our hubs together wasn’t the best way, and they loaned us a cable to get working.
The first match was rough, with the hurried debugging process having reversed cables and left some hardware uninitialized. But in the few moments before the next match the team dove in and got it fixed up, and from there our ranking steadily improved.
The judges gave the team an excellent evaluation on their presentation, and came around during the day between matches to talk further about the robot and the design and build process.
We followed up with successful match partnerships with Insufficient Power, the Cookie Clickers, the Wired Cats, and a CVU team. After the last qualifiers were done, we were in fourth place!
After a variety of negotiations, we agreed to pair with the Wired Cats again for the semifinal round, where we won two of three matches to proceed to the finals. Although we were knocked out of the final round, the Drive team did a fantastic job with Rufus. Despite irregular steering, our alliance built two mosaics in each of our last two games and worked together nicely.
In the end, the team brought home medals as the second place alliance partner, and was honored with the Design Award, and first runner up for the Control Award – and we will advance to the regional tournament in Massachusetts in April!
We have several improvements to make in hardware and software, and Rufus is going to be amazing – but a huge congratulations to the team for their incredible accomplishments today and throughout the season!
What a day! We brought Ahnold up to CVU for the Vermont FTC Championship tournament on February 11, 2023. The team started out before dawn in order to arrive in time to present to the judges in the very first slot at 7:30am.
Then it was on to the robot inspection, where the officials made sure that everything about our robot and game elements was legal. Turns out we’d made a mistake on the size of our custom element, so they clarified that for us and we were able to adjust our ducky rings to suit before our first match.
There were two practice fields laid out for teams to use as needed, which gave plenty of room for everyone to test functionality and work on driving skills. We made sure that our autonomous worked well, and that our drive team knew where to place the robot on the field, and practiced retrieving cones and scoring them. Since we don’t have a full field set up at our workshop, we’d only had the chance to explore the real space of the field once before, with the Cookie Clickers in Bennington.
Coaches meeting, drivers’ meeting; our drivers were Takoda and Isaac, and Carter was the drive coach. Zach was our team’s “human player”, having studied the rules so that he was prepared to set out cones and scoring elements correctly and promptly. The schedule was devised, and the matches began!
The opening ceremony featured a young woman from Afghanistan’s all-female FTC team, who had escaped and were now scattered around the world where they could continue studying engineering. She lives now in the Brattleboro area and is attending college in nearby Massachusetts.
Ahnold worked beautifully! Our autonomous routine was absolutely consistent throughout the qualifying rounds; and our drivers were able to score cones reliably, worked with our alliance partners to create circuits, capped with our custom element, and even managed to park in the right place by the end of the matches.
Between the matches, judges and other volunteers came around to see how all the teams were doing. The atmosphere was one of friendly competition, and we went around and admired other robots, loaned equipment if needed, and generally enjoyed the community. We got some great ideas from the Robohawks for a drivers’ station console, too!
We came into the competition hoping to be in the top 10 out of 19 teams. As the matches went on, we were consistently above that measure! We began to hope.
At the end of the qualifying rounds, not only had we achieved a top 10 ranking, we were fourth overall, and that gave us a sure spot as an Alliance Captain in the semi-finals!
We had enjoyed a very successful round with Mansfield Mechanics United early in the day, and so we were pleased when they accepted our invitation to be our partners. Visions of Nationals danced in our heads…
Unfortunately, our last qualifying round had involved a collision with the arena wall that misaligned something, or perhaps broke it. One of the wheels wasn’t working correctly. Although our medic gave the wheel assembly a thorough check and verified that it was turning easily and correctly, Ahnold limped through the semi-final matches and was not able to advance to the final rounds.
We cheered on the CVU Redhawks, the CVU Robohawks, Hive Mind and Bubbert Innovations as they played out three full rounds of the finals for an edge-of-the-seat finish!
Vermont will be sending both CVU teams to Nationals to represent our state. However, our day didn’t end there!
Awards
The Manchester Machine Makers succeeded beyond our wildest dreams on the field last Saturday. We also were recognized as a team and individually for our achievements:
Isaac Vernon was chosen (once again!) as a Finalist for the Dean’s List Award, which will be selected and announced at Nationals. The team sure did nominate him for a reason! We’re proud of you and glad to have you as our team’s Captain.
The Manchester Machine Makers was recognized in third place for the Innovate Award. From the FTC Award Descriptions information sheet:
The Innovate Award celebrates a team that thinks imaginatively and has the ingenuity, creativity, and inventiveness to make their designs come to life. This judged award is given to the team that has an innovative and creative robot design solution to any specific components in the FIRST Tech Challenge game. Elements of this award include elegant design, robustness, and ‘out of the box’ thinking related to design.
More importantly, the team earned first place out of all Vermont teams for the Control Award, recognizing our programming for both driver-assist functions and for the most consistent Autonomous Period performance of any team that day, with a solid 20 points per round!
The Control Award celebrates a team that uses sensors and software to increase the robot’s functionality in the field. This award is given to the team that demonstrates innovative thinking to solve game challenges such as autonomous operation, improving mechanical systems with intelligent control, or using sensors to achieve better results. The control component should work consistently in the field.
Engineered Printing Solutions for their generosity of funding and support of our members with their time, ideas, and opportunities;
Burr and Burton Academy for allowing our team to use its space for storage and meetings;
Vermont Academy of Science and Engineering for their Hands-On Science and Technology Grant, giving us the opportunity to experiment our way to success;
And a huge thank-you to all of our donors, friends, family, community members, FIRST volunteers, and fellow FTC Teams for supporting us in our quest to become engineers!
Ahnold will be at BBA along with our Engineering Portfolio while we enjoy our February break and then have some more fun with robotics this spring.
Early morning arrival at the Vermont State FTC Championship, March 19, 2022. Left to right: Zach, Jacob, Isaac, Charlotte, Takoda. Photo credit: Coach Meg.
On Saturday, March 19, 2022, we took our robot, Freya, to the Vermont State FIRST Tech Challenge Championship competition hosted by the CVU RoboHawks in Hinesburg, VT. The competition involves several rounds of Qualification Matches, followed by the Semi-Final Matches, followed by the Final Match based on the rankings earned during the previous matches.
The team started out the day with an interview with two judges. We presented the season’s work, represented in our Engineering Portfolio and our larger Engineering Notebook. These had been polished up over the course of the previous week.
Freya was called up for the first match of the day, bright and early, partnered with the Ringers on the Blue Alliance. After a serious fumble in the Autonomous period, she was able to recover well enough to deliver ducks in the Endgame and score points for the Alliance. However, her delivery system was broken beyond on-site repair, and the remainder of the matches were played without it.
Charlotte and Coach David with FreyaJacob, Isaac, Zach, Charlotte at CVUFreya in the Blue Alliance
Our next Alliance was with the Cookie Clickers, our friends from the Bennington Area Makers. Both robots gave a creditable performance. We went on to play in a total of 6 matches, with each match improving as the drivers became adept at running Freya without her delivery slides and chute. They were able to use her intake to push freight all the way through, delivering to the bottom level of each hub.
The team was interviewed in the pit by the judges, who stopped by with each team to discuss their robots and their approach to the problems posed by the game challenges.
While Freya did not advance past the qualifying matches, she impressed the judges with her design and her modularity. She was able to compete without all her assemblies, and she was able to swap out her alliance markers between red and blue with a little Velcro™. The judges were also impressed by the team’s resilience and their engineering process through the season.
Congratulations to our Team on a Season and Game that was well thought, well designed, and well-played!
Judged Awards
The team came home with three awards – Second Place for the Think Award, Second Place for the Control Award, and First Place for the Design Award.
The Think Award: Removing engineering obstacles through creative thinking.
This judged award is given to the Team that best reflects the journey the team took as they experienced the engineering design process during the build season. The engineering content within the portfolio is the key reference for judges to help identify the most deserving Team. The Team’s engineering content must focus on the design and build stage of the Team’s Robot.
The Team must be able to share or provide additional detailed information that is helpful for the judges. This would include descriptions of the underlying science and mathematics of the Robot design and game strategies, the designs, redesigns, successes, and opportunities for improvement. A Team is not a candidate for this award if their portfolio does not include engineering content.
The Manchester Machine Makers earned Second Place at the Vermont Championships for the Think Award. The team created an Engineering Notebook with detailed and elaborate descriptions of all the systems of the robot, including the design and engineering process of both hardware and software, and the support systems provided by fundraising and community partnerships. This is the third year running in which the Team has been recognized in the Think Award category.
Control Award sponsored by Arm, Inc.: Mastering robot intelligence.
The Control Award celebrates a Team that uses sensors and software to increase the Robot’s functionality in the field. This award is given to the Team that demonstrates innovative thinking to solve game challenges such as autonomous operation, improving mechanical systems with intelligent control, or using sensors to achieve better results. The control component should work consistently in the field. The Team’s engineering portfolio must contain a summary of the software, sensors, and mechanical control, but would not include copies of the code itself.
The Manchester Machine Makers earned Second Place at the Vermont Championships for the Control Award. The team was able to show its consideration for improving the driver controls, and effective use of sensors and algorithms in its software.
Design Award: Industrial design at its best.
This judged award recognizes design elements of the Robot that are both functional and aesthetic. The Design Award is presented to Teams that incorporate industrial design elements into their solution. These design elements could simplify the Robot’s appearance by giving it a clean look, be decorative in nature, or otherwise express the creativity of the Team. The Robot should be durable, efficiently designed, and effectively address the game challenge.
The Manchester Machine Makers earned First Place at the Vermont Championships for the Design Award! The team put a lot of thought into the design of Freya, considering all aspects of how she would need to be both used and maintained. The judges appreciated the swappable Alliance markers as well as how well the robot performed on the field after having removed one component. The modularity of the design and flexibility of the robot’s performance were a key factor in the team’s success.
Isaac Vernon, a sophomore at Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester Vermont and a member of the Manchester Machine Makers 4-H Club and FIRST Tech Challenge Team #16221, was recognized at the Vermont State Championships held on Saturday March 19 at Champlain Valley Union High School in Hinesburg Vermont as one of two FIRST Tech Challenge Dean’s List Finalists representing Vermont.
Isaac Vernon, a sophomore at Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester Vermont and a member of the Manchester Machine Makers 4-H Club and FIRST Tech Challenge Team #16221, was recognized at the Vermont State Championships held on Saturday March 19 at Champlain Valley Union High School in Hinesburg Vermont as one of two FIRST Tech Challenge Dean’s List Finalists representing Vermont.
States the FIRST website: In an effort to recognize the leadership and dedication of FIRST’s most outstanding secondary school students, the Kamen family sponsors an award for selected 10th and 11th grade students known as the FIRST Robotics Competitionand FIRST Tech Challenge Dean’s List.
FIRST stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology”. Similar to National Merit Scholarship Award Winners, there are three categories of FIRST Dean’s List Award students: FIRST Dean’s List Semi-finalists, Finalists, and Winners. The Semi-finalists are compromised of the two students in their 10th or 11th grade school year nominated by each team. FIRST Dean’s List Finalists are comprised of the the students selected at each state/regional championship (Vermont has two Finalists).
FIRST Dean’s List Winners are comprised of the 10 FIRST Robotics Competition and 10 FIRST Tech Challenge students selected from the applicable FIRST Dean’s List Finalists at the FIRST Championship being held April 20-23, in Houston Texas.
All of those Team members who are Semi-finalists, Finalists, and Winners are examples of student leaders who have not only achieved personal technical accomplishment, but also have led their Teams and communities to increased awareness of STEM and of the FIRST organization. It is important to recognize the contributions they have made and will make as they pursue further education, going on to become great leaders, student alumni, and advocates of FIRST.
This is the second year that the Team has been home to a Dean’s List Finalist for Vermont. We are proud of our Team members and grateful for their inspiration and dedication!
Isaac is a founding member of the Manchester Machine Makers and this is his third year on the team.
FTC 16221 Manchester Machine Makers 