Kitty Hawk Mentorship

As part of our 2024 Robotics season, The Wagner Trilobytes are mentoring Kitty Hawk Middle School's Robotics Team, Aviation AI! Since the FTC Kickoff, our team has met up with Aviation AI every Wednesday for three weeks!

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The First Meeting

During our first meeting, we broke off into three groups to discuss the three important aspects of a Robotics Team.

Marketing

Our Marketing team connected with Aviation AI to discuss how to build an organized portfolio and the importance of sponsorships. We also advised creating an engineering notebook to keep track of any new developments regarding the team and their bot.

Building

During the builder discussion, we talked about different mechanisms that could be used for intake on Kitty Hawks robot.

Programming

The programmers met together, and with the help of the Wagner Trilobytes practiced creating a simple autonomous. They also helped Aviation AI gain a better understanding over programming concepts and motor controls!

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The Second Meeting

The next Wednesday, we headed off to Kitty Hawk even more excited to mentor Aviation AI! We selected a different group of our robotics team members to attend this time to give Aviation AI a chance to work with different members with different skillsets.

Building

With the Aviation AI robotics team, the Wagner Trilobytes worked together to improve prototype designs for the Kitty Hawk Robot. Then, we assisted with their intake design and discussed different arm mechanisms to determine which would best suit their robot.

Marketing

In the marketing division, we went over the most appropriate ways to write an email for sponsorships. Then, we listed ways to get more involved with our community, whether in the school or the city. Then, we went over more details about keeping an engineering book, such as how to make sure it stays updated and keeping it organized.

Programming

Kitty Hawk worked with our programmers to delve into the hardware map and the purpose of each component. We then started a TeleOp program and considered how to make improvements to it. We also discussed control hub configuration.

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The Final Meeting

**Another week later, we headed back to Kitty Hawk to meet with Aviation AI for the final mentorship day! Kitty Hawk graciously hosted a pizza party for our teams, allowing us to better know each other and form bonds between members. After eating and a wonderful time socializing, we broke off into our three groups to get back to work.

Building

We came back to learn that Aviation AI had built an arm for their robot while we were gone. During our time together, we further contrasted the arm and attached it to the main robot. It was important to make sure they were prepared for their November 9th competition!

Marketing

During this meet, we wrote out Kitty Hawk's first sponsorship email to a local company!

Programming

We focused on cleaning up Aviation AI's hardware during our meet. We also assisted in clearing their TeleOp program in preperation for the November 9th competition!

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The Goodbye

As sad as we were to be done with our three day mentorship with the Kitty Hawk Middle School Robotics Team, we were proud to have been a part of helping them further developing their robot and training in new skills! We are so proud of the way our first mentorship turned out, and were enthralled to see their amazing performance at our first competition of the season. We look forward to future opportunities to collaborate and mentor more teams as we continue making the Wagner Trilobytes Robotics Team great!