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Aragon Robotics
October 2023 Newsletter

Happy Halloween! 🎃

In this issue, we’ll be covering our achievements at CalGames, the Vallejo Maker Faire, and our long-running SCOUTreach program.

Additionally, this month, Aragon Robotics was featured on Aragon High School’s ATV News!

Watch the segment here!

Aragon Robotics Fundraiser on Nov 7

Aragon Robotics is holding a fundraiser at Amici’s East Coast Pizzeria on Tuesday, November 7th!

Mention Aragon Robotics or show them this flyer and they will generously donate 25% of the purchase to us. See you there!

CalGames 2023

At Woodside High school on Oct. 6 to 8, CalGames took place for the Aragon FRC team. The competition is annually held in the Bay Area by the Western Region Robotics Forum (WRRF), a nonprofit organization. This year, 42 teams participated in the competition, making it the largest CalGames competition yet.

CalGames was an opportunity for new members to interact with other Bay Area Robotics teams. With FRC competitions only taking place in the spring, off-season competitions provide an insight for new members to learn how competitions work and the team is able to look at other team robots.

Additionally, it helped new drivers to get some experience handling the bot. This year, Adam Richter and George Tao, FRC design leads, were drivers for the first time. The drivers had their first home practice on Friday, giving them crucial experience for the following days.

They were able to efficiently score points, helping Aragon win matches. Aragon Robotics made it to the quarterfinals, even becoming first pick for the 7th alliance.

In addition to a technical competition, there are awards that can be won for impact in the community, such as the Founders Award and the Mentor of the Year award. For this competition, the FRC Awards team wrote 12 executive summaries, and, on Saturday, Director Nicole, FRC’s Anish, and Outreach’s Aayushi delivered a 11 minute presentation to a panel of judges. These essays displayed Outreach efforts, highlighting how Aragon Robotics gives back to and makes an impact in the community. While the team did not win the award, they were happy with the interview and felt the judges were excited by what the Outreach team was accomplishing.

The Aragon Outlook covered CalGames too! Check it out here

Vallejo Maker Faire

At Vallejo on Oct. 15, Outreach Member Aanvi Gupta and FTC Mechanical Lead Sam Gulchin ran an Aragon Robotics booth at Maker Faire, an annual event displaying various makers. Artists, clubs, companies, and universities shared their creations, with Aragon Robotics’ booth showcasing our FTC robot.

“The Maker Faire was really cool because that’s where the most innovative [people who are at the] forefront of technology [like NASA] come to exhibit their [creations],” Gupta said. “So the fact that Aragon robotics had a table [there] was really cool.”

At the Maker Faire, the team had the opportunity to create contacts with more experienced engineers.

“I received the direct contact of the engineering club at Cal Maritime,” Gulchin said. “They told us to call the dean of Cal Maritime and [contact their] engineering club. They gladly [offered to] give us a tour, and they even [suggested] mentoring us if everything went well.”

Aragon Robotics also extended its help to rookie teams that were interested in robotics.

“There was a VEX team that was hoping to become an FTC Team,” Gulchin said. “I gave them my phone number and our business card if they needed advice.”

Being able to run a booth for Aragon Robotics was rewarding for Aragon Robotics members.

“When I was a kid, I remember going to the Maker’s Faire and looking at all the exhibits and thinking, ‘Wow, this is really cool,’” Gupta said. “[Now being] one of the exhibitors was a surreal experience.”

Next week on November 4th, Outreach will be participating in a second Maker Faire at Coyote Grange Hall. If you would like to drive our FTC robot and learn more about the team, come see us there— Admission is free!

SCOUTreach

Throughout the years, Aragon Robotics has held several workshops to expose Girl Scouts from the Bay Area to robotics. Our team has devised an interactive curriculum that teaches coding logic, independent problem-solving, and the impact of robots in the modern day.

One of the activities involves cup stacking, where our team members are blindfolded and the scouts are challenged to give a series of instructions to them, simulating a computer program. This activity demonstrates how coding necessitates specific, explicit instructions for computers.

Depending on age, our team also varies the curriculum, teaching the basics of programming with code.org or the more challenging Khan Academy Hour of Code. Additionally, our team has the scouts use Legos to design and build their own creation, and for older kids, complete challenges. At the end, the scouts also have the opportunity to try driving the FTC robot.

Alongside teaching the scouts skills for engineering, our team also encourages them to see the use of robotics in everyday life. They would show the Girl Scouts pictures of the Mars Rover, Wall-E, or an agricultural robot that waters plants. Then, by asking the scouts to generate ideas regarding the purpose of robotics, they encourage independent thinking while teaching them the importance of robotics in various sectors of life.

“As a robotics team, we’re focused on making competitively viable robots and doing well at competitions,” said FTC Mechanical Lead Stuti Goel. “We win awards then we move onto other competitions. However, with SCOUTreach, we’re impacting someone's life, which is something far more permanent.”

Participating in SCOUTreach helps Aragon Robotics members share their knowledge with the younger generation, encouraging girls to get interested in STEM.

If you would like to organize a SCOUTreach for your own group of children, reach out to ar.outreachcaptain@gmail.com!