Recently a team from the Jusidman Science Center for Youth took part in a national competition organized by FIRST, a global robotics competition for young people - FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) held for the first time in Israel.
The FTC is a robotics competition for high school students, which takes place in over 15 countries worldwide. Teams of students spend a significant amount of time designing, building, programming their robot and learning what it takes to be part of a team and compete against other teams.
The team practiced 4-5 times a week, and in recent months learned programming, mechanics, engineering drawing, strategy, teamwork and project management.
The Jusidman Team is unique as it includes religious and secular youths, Jews and Bedouins, and boys and girls who work together. In addition to their intensive training, the team also volunteered at a Center for deaf children and in Soroka University Medical Center.
At the competition, the team won the Rockwell Collins Innovate Award. This Award celebrates a team that not only thinks outside the box, but also has the ingenuity and inventiveness to make their designs come to life. This judged award is given to the team that has the most innovative and creative robot design solution to any or all specific field elements or components in the FTC game. Elements of this award include elegant design, robustness, and ‘out of the box’ thinking related to design and may address the design of the whole robot, or of a sub-assembly attached to the robot.
Above: The robotics team from the Jusidman Science Center for Youth
