Dr. Richard Collins from the Pathfinder chapter invited local robotics teams to participate in the three day symposium. Each team would have a booth for a half day during one of the three days. Our time to shine was this morning from 8 AM to noon. We packed a trailer with two of our robots and some team publicity materials on Monday after school, then met in the College Academy parking lot at 7:30 AM on Tuesday. After loading our vehicles we headed to the Davidson Center at the Space & Rocket Center. As soon as we got there we were informed that we need a driving robot on the stage in the Davidson Center Theater to start off the day. We had to wait until Mayor Paul Finley of Madison, AL spoke, then we had the stage. The students quickly got the robot turned on and demonstrated how the robot drives with mecanum wheels to all the symposium attendees in the theater. We then went to set up our 10' x 10' booth (same size as a pit at competition) with two of our robots and some trifolds showing team photos from our past seasons. The students spent time either staying at the booth to talk to attendees, or visiting the other exhibitors under the Saturn V.
A second robotics team also was attending at the same time as we were, the Nerdettes from Huntsville High School. The team had a great time going around to all the exhibitors and talking to them about their drones and other displays. And getting free stuff, of course!
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Saturday August 20 was the North Huntsville Back-to-School Parade & Festival. There were fancy cars, bands, dance teams, and lots of other groups in the parade. We were the only robotics team. There was Jemison's band, plus bands from two other high schools in the area and from Alabama A&M. We decorated a float (trailer provided by one of the mentors) at our previous team meeting and then had students ride and walk alongside. After the parade there was a Festival at the school. There were food trucks, music, and several "booths" where teams and organizations displayed their wares. We set up a photo gallery of the team's last 7 years, and had three robots on display. Attendees could come and drive a robot or just look at what we had. We handed out prizes to people who tried driving the robot.
The weather was threatening rain (it actually was sprinkling) so the Festival attendance was low. We had to take down our booth about 2 hours before the festival ended due to incoming rain. But by that time most of the booths had started shutting down. |
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