VERTEX #15534 Our Mission We want to rejuvenate our age-old campus with technology and vitality. We want to educate our people with both humor and knowledge. We want to let hi-tech be tangible and fun to all people in our community. ftcvertex.com VERTEX Seasonal Highlights and Summaries VERTEX 15534 is a rookie team from Exeter, New Hampshire comprised of 13 members. Because Phillips Exeter Academy is a boarding school and PEA is an institution that has an extremely diverse student body, it provides us with a unique opportunity to have a diverse group of people on the team from around the globe. 66% of our team is female or non-binary, 44% of our team is comprised of international students, and 55% of our team is comprised of rookie members. Seasonal Highlights: By far our biggest highlight of the season was the States competition. Between just having an amazing day and being able to see our robot doing well along with getting to compete against other teams and proving to ourselves we are a top player States is our biggest season highlight in terms of our robot. One of the biggest things that came out of States was belief in ourselves. We go to Exeter, a very competitive school, and we have learned to value that there will always be someone better than us but it was also a really big confidence builder to get Inspire award and be one only a handful of rookie teams in the recent history of FTC to get inspire. Vincent, our Mechanical head, even swore he saw so much surprise at our win on Reddit. The beauty is also in the journey not just the destination. Saying that we have also had a lot of highlights during our journey to States and now to Worlds. One of our biggest highlights and proudest point was during STEM Day. It was just so amazing to be able to see the project through to completion from talking to our school activities director and getting STEM Day approved to seeing students pour into the event excited and energized to learn about it was a great journey and it served as also a launching off point for more of our bigger outreach events such as the Crafting center and the FLL/FTC meet-up. Another one of our highlights was at the start of our season the FLL state championship. The FLL state championship was a really moving moment for us especially since Penny, Vincent, and Kai who were there were all on FLL in middle school in the area and got to see their FLL teams at States. It was also a great point for us to meet other teams in the area, Gluten Free and HackGearz, who we went on to build lasting relationships with over the season. Also, the FLL showcase was one of the first times we had seen the first rendition of our robot work and it was really empowering to get to drive it around the venue. The FIRST meetup is just another example of VERTEX’s dedication to our mission statement educating people with humor and knowledge along with making hi-tech, FTC, tangible and accessible to people in our community. By our community we are of course referring to the large first community that we are all a part of. At the FTC/FLL meetup we reached out of upcoming FLL junior teams through our launch of Part Shop and Kai’s presentation “FIRST: It’s more than the robot game.” By spreading information for rookie teams on first we are breaking down the barriers of those who have information vs those who do not. During the meetup we also made sure that every team left knowing another team. We see a lot of friendships between teams at the high school level and these kids, if they continue with robots, will have other friends in robotics. We believe this will also help with the spread of information. Some pages we’d like you to look at are: PAGE TOPIC 11 Strategy 18 Finalized Robot’s Mechanisms 30 Our Rotation Subroutine 35 & 36 Our School’s First STEM Day 42 Girls Who Code – Silicon Valley Ethics 52 Ethipass 55 FIRST Team Gathering 1 | Page VERTEX Contents SEASONAL HIGHLIGHTS AND SUMMARIES 1 WHO ARE WE? 5 Subgroups 6 Individual Biographies 7 ENGINEERING AND STRATEGIES 11 Mechanical 12 Vincent Jr. 12 Riboflavin Central Jr. (RCj) 13 Riboflavin Central V0 (States) 14 Riboflavin Central (Worlds) 18 CAD (Computer Aided Design) 22 Vincent Jr. 22 Riboflavin Central 23 Custom Parts 24 Programming 28 Autonomous 28 Teleop 31 BUSINESS PLAN 33 Community Outreach 35 STEM Day 35 Girls Who Code 40 Girls Who Code – Round 2! 42 Seacoast Outright 46 YMCA 47 FLL State Championship 50 Ethipass 52 Exeter Computing Club 54 New Hampshire FIRST Team Gathering 55 Relay For Life 57 Exeter Student Crafting Center 58 ESSO Robotics 60 Part Shop 61 iRobot 62 Xenex 64 Society of Military Surgeons 65 2 | Page VERTEX Fake News and Today’s Media Landscape 66 Andrew Yang 67 Boston Dynamics 68 Sustainability 69 Budgeting 72 ENTRIES 78 Scrimmages and Competitions 79 Alvrine High School 79 Dover Middle School 81 Parkside Middle School 83 States 84 Daily Entries 87 September 24, 2018 87 October 3, 2018 88 October 6, 2018 88 October 10, 2018 89 October 12, 2018 90 October 14, 2018 92 October 17, 2018 94 October 20, 2018 95 October 22, 2018 97 October 24, 2018 98 October 26, 2018 100 October 27, 2018 101 October 28, 2018 102 October 10, 2018 103 November 7, 2018 104 November 9, 2018 105 November 11, 2018 106 November 14, 2018 107 November 17, 2018 109 November 21, 2018 – December 2, 2018 110 December 5, 2018 111 December 3, 2018 – December 8, 2018 112 December 9, 2018 113 December 10, 2018 114 December 12, 2018 115 December 14, 2018 116 December 19, 2018 – January 9, 2019 117 January 9, 2019 118 January 11, 2019 119 January 13, 2019 120 January 16, 2019 120 3 | Page VERTEX January 18, 2019 121 January 23, 2019 121 February 2, 2019 122 February 13, 2019 123 February 15, 2019 124 February 17, 2019 125 February 20, 2019 125 February 22, 2019 126 February 24, 2019 127 March 1, 2019 127 March 3, 2019 – March 17, 2019 128 March 20, 2019 129 March 22, 2019 130 March 24, 2019 131 March 27, 2019 132 March 29, 2019 133 March 31, 2019 134 April 3, 2019 134 April 7, 2019 135 April 10, 2019 136 April 12, 2019 137 April 13, 2019 138 April 14, 2019 139 4 | Page VERTEX Who Are We? We want to rejuvenate our age-old campus with technology and vitality. We want to educate our people with both humor and knowledge. We want to let hi-tech be tangible and fun to ALL people in our community. After a year of planning and organization, Vertex 15534, from Exeter, New Hampshire, is excited to participate in our first ever robotics competition as a team. Our team consists of members from different national, racial, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds, but we all work towards the same passion. Our experiences enhance our creativity and curiosity to try new methods. Vertex 15534 hopes to inspire friends back home to discover the engineering world and friends here to embrace differences and keep pushing towards a larger goal of unity. [Standing: David S., Neil, David W., Celine, Felix, Mr. Gallo, Summer, Kai, Joy, Panda] [Sitting: Vincent, Penny] 5 | Page VERTEX Subgroups CAD (Computer Aided Design) The Computer-Aided Design (CAD) team creates needed original pieces and recreates ordered parts to visualize the final assembly. They ensure that the parts fit into our main chassis and keep our design creative. Members: David Song (lead), Panda Atipunumphai, Celine Tan Community Outreach One of our main goals, as an FTC team, is to reach out to the community and spread awareness and knowledge of STEM. Our CO team organizes events to make this possible, and connects our team to the outside world. Members: Summer Hua (lead), Kai Lockwood, Mana Vale Mechanical/Electrical The mechanical team is in charge of constructing the robot and driving the robot once the robot is completed. The electrical team is in charge of wiring the electrical components together and ensuring the safety of the robot before every run. Members: Vincent Xiao (lead), Joy Liu, Kai Lockwood Programming The programming team is in charge of encoding our robot with strong fundamental tasks and our unique strategical actions. They give our robot its personality! Members: Penny Brant (lead), Neil Chowdhury 6 | Page VERTEX Individual Biographies Panda Atipunumphai – CAD Panda is currently an 11th grader from Thailand at Phillips Exeter Academy. She has done some CAD for visualizing multifunctional desktop products for CIE IGCSE Design Technology, but does not have experience with CAD used for robotics, which uses much more mechanics, and is looking forward to learning from her teammates and friends. She had been spreading her love for STEM in Thailand organizing and teaching a two-week summer course, which introduced middle school and high school girls in Thailand to the basics of programming, and an advanced course preparing for the CIE IGCSE Computer Science. She looks forward to being able to continue to learn and eventually teach CAD to members of this new community. Penny Brant – Programming Lead/Coach Penny is an 11th grader at Phillips Exeter Academy, her passion for computer science is shown through her various projects on campus to convenient student life - some working with FTC robots! She has had plenty of experience with robotics through FLL, FTC, ROV MATE, VEX and SeaPerch and is very excited to work on VERTEX as the chief programmer.