Fort Worth Maker Fest

By Jayesh, Omar, Max, Tycho, Lin, Darshan, Evan, Ethan, and Austin

Task: Show both adults and children benefits of robotics and past work of the team

Iron Reign was invited to present at the annual Fort Worth Maker Fest at the city's Museum of Science. We spent the day showing off our competition bots and other robots that we have created over the years. People were especially interested in our innovation with climbing the mountain and using simple every day objects like tape measures to carry our huge and heavy robot up several feet. We were approached by multiple adults with robotics experience, even one of our previous judges, and were told of how they were impressed with our level of expertise. We also fascinated multiple children with the robotics, with their enthusiasm in trying out the bot in a few mini games and seeing our other robots, such as the balancing robot, hopefully opened their eyes up to possibly pursuing STEM careers in their futures.

Reflections

Our opportunity at the Maker Fest to present to multiple generations of passers-by helped us appreciate the level of robotics knowledge and technique that we have acquired over the years, both as individuals and as a group. To be praised by both professionals in the field and see the level of interest we imparted to multiple children, we recognized that what we have done and will continue doing has meaning, not just for us, but for our community. We had some fun adventures at the museum, including an intense discussion of the DC and Marvel Universes with a few of our booth neighbours and balancing Kibosh on a hover board while attempting to steer(future content incoming).