The Marietta DE field is almost complete! Thanks to generous sponsorship from GeorgiaFIRST and over 600 hours of student and parent work, we have our first open field this Thursday, 2/9 from 6:30 to 9:30 pm. 

DE Marietta has a full field with a steel airship, boilers, and loading stations for your use.

The first five teams to respond back will be able to participate in this open field event. Good luck to all teams and remember practice makes perfect.

Please remember to bring your own safety glasses for everyone who attends a DE event! Closed toe shoes are also required.

We look forward to seeing teams moving on the field!

Walton’s field build crew

Thanks for your hard work!

Here’s the flyer – Interview and Application Workshop 2017

The next GirlsFIRST Programming Workshop will be held on Saturday, December 3 from 1pm to 3pm at Walton High School.

This is a FREE event open to all high school girls. Participating girls will have an opportunity to work on fun programming challenges tailored to their programming knowledge. Wendy Frazier, VP Software Engineering at The Weather Company, an IBM Business, will  be our VIP Guest and will share her expertise in web development and give the girls advice on how to be successful in a STEM career.

And as always, we will network and share some free SWAG!

Registration is available at https://goo.gl/forms/lQT6lsLdXZa51sYO2. Seating is limited, so don’t wait to sign up! Please join us to meet this amazing STEM leader and sharpen your programming skills and learn new ones!

GRITS 2016 was a fantastic event for the FIRST program. On Saturday, October 22, our team was able to to debut a brand new drive team and scouting team. We trained a few new members in our pit, we held a signup for our upcoming GirlsFIRST events, and we even practiced mock awards scouting to prepare for competition.

Thanks to everyone who made this event possible! A special thanks goes out to Riverside Military Academy for hosting this incredible offseason competition. Our team is excited for the upcoming build season and FIRST Steamworks!

We are very disappointed to report that, due to unforeseen circumstances, we will have to reschedule the GirlsFIRST event planned for this Saturday, October 15 at Walton High School.

Thank you very much for interest in working together and learning about futures in STEM.   We will let you know as soon as the GirlsFIRST event is rescheduled.  I hope you will be able to join us then.

In the meantime, if you would like any additional information about GirlsFIRST or Walton Robotics, please contact us.  We would enjoy sharing our passion for STEM with you.

Thank you again for your time and understanding.  We look forward to meeting you in the near future.

Walton Robotics is hosting another GirlsFIRST event on Saturday, October 15. This is a free event for high school girls at Walton High School. Activities include networking with female STEM professionals, participate in a fun engineering challenge, and learn how to drive robots. Lunch will be provided. Please register at  https://goo.gl/forms/vsDaHSHYAOCIOEuA2. Registration is limited to the first 100 girls.

Download a copy of the flyer here — girls-first-flyer-pdf-2

Today, the Walton Robotics Team marched among its fellow East Cobb community, spreading its message along the way. Our team clearly made a lasting impact on many of the families that attended, and everyone was happy to see us in action. Thanks so much to East Cobber for making the event possible, and we hope to see everyone there again next year!

WRT in the march

Team member Noah teaching kids how to drive the robot

Festival attendees with Walt

Team members Ria, Allison, Snehal, and Simran at our booth

Team member Ria handing out Flat Walts

Future robotics student next to Walt

Last weekend, the Walton Robotics Team coach and seven team members travelled to Orlando, Florida to host a demo at a local radio host’s family event. At the demo, our team displayed the tshirt cannon and the stacker bot (for people to drive and operate), slingshot rocket construction (so kids and adults could make their own rockets), a business booth with the functions/accomplishments of our team, and a section for EV3 robot driving for little kids. The demo was a huge success; an estimated 800 people were impacted by some aspect of our team alone. We thank NASA for inviting us to share our team with the Orlando community, and we look forward to working with NASA more in the future!

Team members and NASA astronaut with Walt

Reunion attendee posing with Walt & t-shirt cannon

Team member Kenneth explaining the various mechanisms of t-shirt cannon

On January 1st of 2016, after our kickoff event, the build season was underway. We immediately started with the design process. Everyone on our team is involved in the design of the robot so that we essentially be together for an entire day and talk about pros and cons of different robots, so that everyone on the team has a say in the final robot. Next, we utilized the following two weeks prototyping and finishing designs. After the designs were finalized and the prototypes broken down, we began building the practice robot and the competition robot. We build two robots simultaneously each year so that we can have one left over for our drivers to practice with. As the six weeks drew to a close, our robot was shaping up to be something amazing. Finally, the night bag-and-tag rolled around, we put the electrical together and all the finishing touches. We bagged up the robot after six busy weeks, and left it alone until the first competition two weeks later.

Columbus District 

Columbus was the first competitive event that we attended in 2016. Throughout the day, there was a little bit of trial and error with the firing of our catapult mechanism, which is the design we chose for Stronghold Bot. Since the competition robot was different from the    practice bot at our build site, we had to make major adjustments, being as our intake could only pick up about three balls per match. Eventually, after hard fighting, we got to pick the alliance that we thought that would best complement our capabilities. Unfortunately, both of our alliance members were nonfunctional during  the finals, along with our robot’s intake being broken, so we ended up losing in the end. But there was still much to look forward to, being as our intake problems could be solved before the next competition, in Dalton.

Action shot of Stronghold Bot at Columbus

Walton Robotics Team pit at DaltonWorlds 2016

Worlds

Worlds competiton is high stress situation for everyone on the team. This is especially true for the members of the drive team. They spendthe whole time on the field where everyone can see them. Every mistake they may make can be easily seen by everyone, so pressure levels are beyond intense. This year’s drive team gave it their all and minimally let up. However, luck was not on our side, because during almost every match, there was something wrong with the robot. Instead of freaking out, the drive team calmly worked out each problem. But Worlds is home to the best of the best, and even though we rectified our mistakes, the fact that we had mistake at all put us at a major disadvantage. We took a lot away from Worlds 2016, and this experience will guide us for many years to come.

Worlds 2016 atmosphere