News

We had one exciting and busy Saturday! Many of you may already know this but January 9th was the FRC game reveal.   Our team, as well as thousands of other FRC teams, found out the task that the robots must complete for the 2016 challenge Stronghold.  The Girls of Steel attended our regional kickoff event hosted by the A. W. Beattie Career School and FRC team 2051, Beattie Bulldogs.  The day started early with some guest speakers and yummy snacks.   We were happy to see one of our newest sponsors, Comcast, there graciously…continue reading →

Our final week of preseason started on December 15th and was packed with excitement! The start of our 2015/2016 season has flown by. The Tuesday meeting began with our last preseason all hands meeting!  Sarris candies were also delivered on the 15th. All hands slides are available here.  The video update about the meeting is available here. This week we also played another triad game. The junior members then split off from the rest of the team to work on their FTC robot, Dori. Check out this American Girl video featuring the junior…continue reading →

We went over the usual topics in our second to the last all hands meeting of the preseason on December 8th.  There are many important dates coming up.  We have two mandatory meetings--on December 13th at 12:00-4:30 is the SHARP FRC Community Day event at Sarah Heinz House, and on December 18th at 5-8:30 is the EOPP Extra Build Day.  For the EOPP day, you must have your WWTG release forms in which can be found as an attachment with the weekly update email.  For the mandatory meetings, you MUST RVSP yes or…continue reading →

Tuesday, December 1st, we met and held our weekly preseason meeting- #9.  First, we went over the basics, such as, the 5 components of GoS principles: integrity, teamwork, safety, communication, and respect.  Our hybrid animal of inspiration this week is the pengwolf...a mix of a penguin and a wolf.  This is our animal model of the week because both penguins and wolves move and live in groups--emphasizing the importance of teamwork in GoS.  During the meeting, we talked about many important topics.  Mentioned, was the price of the Rosie t-shirts ($15) which are…continue reading →

In the November 24th meeting, the 8th of 11 preseason meetings, we started off talking about upcoming events. First, we discussed the weekly topics, such as qualities necessary to be a part of the GoS Robotics Team, based on the Girls of Steel Principles. We also talked about needing to submit a photo of ourselves for our CMU ID. The new due date for Sarris Candy orders is now Tuesday, December 1st. Also in the meeting, we discussed the cost of the GoS "Thursday" t-shirts ($15) and the team shirts which are free…continue reading →

Tuesday, November 17th, we had another weekly preseason meeting (#7).  First, we had the all hands meeting where we discussed the daily topics--such as the necessary traits to have while on the Girls of Steel team, signing up to receive our Girls of Steel CMU IDs, and what to do to sign up to attend an outreach event (i.e FLL). Next, we met up with our triads and tried a new game!  This game was similar to headbands--we were each given a post-it note to put on our head, with a celebrity name…continue reading →

Our meeting on November 10th was full of excitement and learning.  The meeting got started with a presentation from our technical leader, outlining important team information and events. Then we talked about the team culture of Girls of Steel with our mentor George focusing on being inclusive to all team members. Following our talk with George the junior members split off to get to work on their FTC robots while we announced the game for this year's End of Preseason Project (EOPP). The EOPP is a mock competition made up by some of…continue reading →

November 3rd was our 5th meeting and it was super exciting! This week the turtle-elephant was added to our “zoo” to represent not having to carry a large burden alone and not feeling so stressed. Many girls are enjoying this portion of the all hands meeting because it shows universal ideas that everyone learns from! After some fun during triad fun time, the 8th graders and the high schoolers separated for business then technical teams. The eighth graders made serious advancements during this last meeting! They added arms and claws to their recently…continue reading →

The 4th GoS preseason meeting was held on October 27th. The weekly meeting consisted of talks about many upcoming events, which are very important to the team.  Then the team split up into their business groups, for about an hour, after doing another weekly “triad fun time” activity.  This week’s triad activity was called “I Went to the Market…” - a simple memory game.  After the game, the high school members went to their designated room to meet with their business team, where they continued their duties to further their process in making…continue reading →

On Tuesday, October 20th, Girls of Steel (GoS) held their 3rd weekly preseason meeting at Carnegie Mellon University.  First, we went through the all hands presentation with the important announcements, dates, and upcoming events.  After a detailed discussion about the nearing events, the team broke up into triads, or groups of three or four junior, new, and returning girls, to talk and play a game.  Gigi, a returning girl in GoS, came up with a game to help introduce the girls to other girls they had never met before, in order to make…continue reading →

October 13th was our second official preseason meeting. To kick off the meeting we started with our all hands meeting followed by some fun triad time.  The whole team divided by grade level to play the human knot and see who could untangle the fastest, the seniors won by a landslide! The eighth graders split off and began to explore their FTC kits, and by the end of the meeting they had most of the chassis built and were able to name all of the parts in the kit!  While our eighth graders…continue reading →

On Tuesday, October 6, we kicked off our 2015-2016 year. It was the first time we had all of this years girls together. In total our team will include 66 girls from 31 area schools. Our team's  junior member program has 17 eighth grade girls. With this program the girls will be meeting once a week to explore the FIRST tech challenge (FTC) robotics platform. On the FIRST robotics competition (FRC) side there will be 49 girls competing. Our meeting began with an informational session for the entire team. After, we broke off into triads (groups of returning girls,…continue reading →

Wow! Girls of Steel had an incredibly busy and productive summer designing, leading and mentoring four of our very own camps! We kicked off the summer with the Girls of Steel NCWIT Aspire IT       Summer Camp “Programming Your Future with Robotics!” at Carnegie Mellon University on June 15-19. The purpose of the camp was to encourage more girls to see themselves doing computing and robotics in the future. We had 18 girls in grades 6 to 8 with mentors Sophia, Sylvia, Sonia, Alexa, and Corinne. The students had a lot of…continue reading →

Hi everyone! Well, it’s official! The FRC season is over. Where did the time go? It seems like we had our first preseason meeting a few weeks ago!! We had an exciting and eventful season, what with changing and improving Ada between all our competitions, winning Chairman’s, going to Champs, winning awards, and meeting so many new people! We’re sad to see it end, but there’s always next year to look forward to. And in the meantime we’ve got lots and lots of outreach to do! Outreach is the way Girls of Steel…continue reading →

The last week and a half has really flown by!! We had a great time at champs (won two awards!! :)) and are celebrating, but sad to bring the season to a close. One of the most important parts of champs for me, the Media Lead of the team, was the presentation we gave on 'Building a Pipeline for Girls in FRC & STEM'  at the championship conferences.  At this presentation, we shared our story about creating a pipeline, and gave inspiration to other FRC and FTC teams to create their own! Thanks…continue reading →

Hi everyone! This past Saturday, April 11th,  we, along with another FRC team, SHARP, held the annual Post Season FRC Scrimmage at the CMU/Girls of Steel Robotics Practice Field. We had seven different teams come out to watch their robot go up against other FRC teams robots. The overarching theme for this event was “fun”. The point of this scrimmage was not to see who had the best robot, but it was rather an opportunity to hang out and get to know the other teams around the area. This scrimmage had events such…continue reading →

Hello everyone! The past couple of weeks have been full of excitement.  We recently took our robot, Ada, to the Buckeye Regional Competition in Cleveland, Ohio. This year we were one of three all girls teams competing at Buckeye – Murphy’s Outlaws (FRC 677), Fighting Unicorns (FRC 2399), and Girls of Steel (FRC 3504).  The Fighting Unicorns invited us to a delicious ice cream social with ice cream graciously donated by Mitchell’s Ice Cream of Cleveland. It was inspiring to see the true spirit of FIRST at the competition as both teams cheered…continue reading →

Hi everyone! In preparation for our competition at Buckeye this weekend, we had a pow-wow on Tuesday to get the team in spirit! To update you on the robot since Pittsburgh: we have decided to remove the doors and fingers, we have made the shack arms more efficient by lengthening the grippers and we have strengthened the collectors. The drive team has been practicing with Bada, our practice robot for the last two weeks. At the pow-Wow, we finished making posters and buttons to handout at the competition, drive team practiced, and had…continue reading →

Hi everyone! Have you missed reading these blog posts? Don't worry, we have LOTS to share in this one. I'll start with the big things first: Our robot had a major makeover this past weekend! Can you guess which two subsystems got taken off? If you guessed the doors and fingers, then you are right! We decided that the doors were not as useful as we had made them to be, especially since we modified our grippers to hold totes more easily with their rubber and extensions. We decided that our robot was…continue reading →

We can't believe that build season is over! The robot is bagged and tagged, after an exciting weekend of Week Zero with teams 2656, 3260, 3955, 4031, and 4150!! At Week Zero, we gave the other teams in Pittsburgh a chance to compete and test out their robot! We held matches as well as just had fun with everyone driving our robot around and stacking totes. On Tuesday, we spent seven hours putting the final touches and last testing before bagging our robot. We made a switch to 6" mecanum wheels instead of 8"…continue reading →

Week 5 was one of our most successful weeks so far! We have made lots of progress and are excited to share it with you! First of all, our robot now has a name - Ada - in honor of the first female programmer! :) Ada's electronics and pneumatics are completely done, as well as her assembly of the top and bottom trifold and the fingers. Her Shack, Collectors and Lifters are closed to being assembled onto her chassis, and the Doors are being welded as well. Programmers have done a lot of…continue reading →

I hope everyone's build season is going great!! During week 4, we really picked up the pace on our robot. We fully completed the chassis and managed to get it to drive in less than half an hour!! We started our second chassis for our practice robot with small changes, and are planning to replace the current chassis on the competition bot with that one if we finish before bag and tag. We finished all of the 'trifold' or walls in which the stacks will be built! Our fingers, slider, and collector mechanisms…continue reading →

We can't believe we're halfway through build season!! This week, we made lots of progress on our chassis and manipulator mechanisms. Our U-chassis has been completely welded and is in the process of assembly. Our trifold, the 'walls' between which the stacks of totes and containers will be built, is in the process of fabrication as well. Our collector, gripper (previously called 'wedges') and shack mechanisms have all been CADed completely! The gripper will begin (and hopefully finish!) assembly tomorrow, Tuesday. The electronics boards are very close to being finished, also. Programming finished…continue reading →

Week 2 was just as busy as Week 1! In Mechanical, we finished the bottom part of our U-chassis! We added a new part - the 'doors' - which function to hold the stacks from falling out of the U-chassis. Programming worked on autonomous and the mechanum drive, as well as finishing most of the code for the subsystems. The programming team has worked hard to create several different autonomi, as we call it. Among these include picking up 1 container and 3 totes, 1 tote and 1 container, or just 1 container.…continue reading →

The first week of build season was hectic yet successful. Starting with a five hour brainstorming session following icy roads on kickoff morning, we designed, prototyped, CADed, tested new wheels, and began the chassis of our robot! Chassis & Programming: We are currently working on a U-shaped chassis with mecanum wheels. By Thursday, programmers had received the prototyped chassis to begin testing how the wheels handled different weight distributions, driving over the scoring platforms from different orientations, and finally, we began working on PIDs. Tuesday, January 13, programmers started coding subsystems, since we…continue reading →