RiverRobotics Team: Outstanding Successes and New Projects

– Could you briefly describe the history of our robotics team? What achievements have you had and what is your proudest moment?

RiverRoboticsTeam makes a difference in life with its cognitive and social skills, in order to represent Irmak Schools at the FRC (First Robotics Competition). It was established in June 2019 as a team of High School Prep, 9-10-11-12 level grade students. In the beginning, our students from different grade levels did not know each other very well. When we started to participate in tournaments, we managed to become a team. We named our team River Robotics, which is the English name of our school. Within three years, the number of our team members and mentors has increased considerably. The biggest increase was the number of female members in our team.

We asked ourselves this question a lot at our first meeting. “Why did we set up such a team? What is our aim? As students with such diverse talents and interests, why do we want to be a member of a robotics team?” We realized that we are all together to give something a chance. Some of us are into nature, some of us care street animals, some of us are children who are curious about technology but do not have enough opportunities to establish a robotics team…

Thus, “Give A Chance” became our motto.

All the students that make up our team are talented and versatile in different fields. Apart from the students who make the robot and have technical knowledge, there are also students who support the team socially.

Robotics club students in our school constitute the potential student group that feeds our team. According to the education in the fields of design, software and PR within the club, students can find the opportunity to work in the field they want according to their interests and skills.

Since the day the team was founded, we have returned with awards from all the tournaments we have participated in as a reward for our determined work. The most meaningful for us, of course, was our first national tournament, Istanbul Regional. It was our first tournament and we won 3 awards, two of which were the “Winner” and “Rookie All Star” awards that took us to the championship held in Houston. Our other award was the “Rookie High Seed” award given to the team with the highest score among the Rookie teams.

Our achievements in the past

The sustainability of our work as our team, our ability to reach large audiences with our Social Responsibility Projects, our success in workshops and competitions where we bring professionals from different fields together with FRC teams by using our network are indicators that we are on the right track. Each student is very successful in their field of interest. Our students also have many individual achievements in our school, and most importantly, our team is collaborative, courageous, never giving up, sensitive, questioning, researching, determined, supporting each other under all conditions and has a versatile structure. It is one of our most important principles to always think differently and creatively.

We are assertive not only in social responsibility projects, but also in the field of robotics. Our team has a very hardworking and successful mechanic and software team. The tournaments we entered shortly after their establishment and our achievements;

Our Future Plans

As a team, our mission is to prepare young minds, who are the future of our country, to increase our skills in technological and robotic systems, and to set an example for our environment by giving an opportunity to nature, stray animals, science, art and even our own future.

Our vision is as a team that has internalized FIRST values; To spread science, technology, and innovation in Turkey and in the world under the motto of “Give a Chance”.

For this purpose, we want to participate in the World Championships that will be held in Houston first and as the winner, we want to compete in the Einstein tournaments where the best ones compete.

We run the Istanbul Marathon every year as a social responsibility project. This is a sustainable project of ours, this year we ran for the Koruncuk foundation and provided our girls with education.

On January 7, the game of the new season was announced and we analyzed the game as a team and started the construction of our robot. Tournaments we will participate in the new season; “10-12 March Mersin Regional” and “24-26 March Istanbul Regional”.

– Do you have any new projects?

This year, we will have two projects covering both sustainability and this year’s theme, energy. The first is “Projects that Charge the Mind”, a project competition where young people will both express their creativity and reflect on energy efficiency. We expect teams to produce crazy brainstorming projects that are energy efficient and save. We are planning to organize this competition for middle school students in our school. Our other project is to produce filaments from waste plastics to be used in 3D printers. While designing our robot, we produce some parts in 3D and we need a lot of filaments. Considering the amount of PET bottles we consume in daily life, we have developed a project to transform plastic bottles into filaments in order to prevent them from polluting the environment by throwing them away and to save energy and economy by reusing them. We want to offer the filaments we produce with a mechanism we produce to the use of other tools.

 With the awareness of our motto “Give a Chance”, we provide “Arduino” training to children in Yakacık Hatice Abbas Halim Love House. Our training programs, in which robotic coding with Arduino is taught, will continue throughout the year. We also bought Arduino kits for our friends here. We also want to give them the opportunity to develop projects where they can apply what they have learned by gifting them with these sets.

– Could you tell us about your robot, did you participate in a competition with this robot?

Every year, the FRC announces the new season game with its Kickoff event. Each season’s game and rules are different. With the Kickoff event, the match plan changes completely. The construction of the robot, which aims to overcome the difficulties in this new match plan, begins with this event. We are currently in the process of building our new robot. In the new season game, our robot aims to put the cubes and funnels in the match field on the steps of different heights with the systems we will design and attach them to the bars. At the same time, at the end of the match, robots must stay in balance by mounting a seesaw-like mechanism called “charge station”. To fulfill all these tasks, our mechanical, software and electronic team works on the robot and develops different mechanisms. This year, we are also aiming to get more points in the autonomous process that takes place in 15 seconds by improving our autonomous skills.

– Finally, what would you recommend to our students who are interested in robotics, how can they improve themselves in this regard?

Working in the field of robotics changes a student’s view of the world, as well as improving many of their characteristics. Robotics is a job that requires patience. We advise you to never give up. “Try and fail” is the biggest factor that will enable them to develop. Getting started is half the success. Even if it is difficult at first, they will realize that their efforts are worth it as they see the rewards. They can benefit from the resources on the internet to improve themselves. They can participate in competitions related to robotics such as FRC, FLL, even if they are about the audience.