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Meet the Rolling robots Inventors
Our robotics team has always excelled at every challenge we have put in front of them. They have won big at VEXWorlds and were inducted to the STEM Hall of Fame. Since moving on up to high school, they have consistently won local tournaments and advanced to VEXWorlds. We have a 5 year record of qualifying for the world championship and winning awards each year.
These are remarkable achievements for anyone, and I have little doubt they will all go on to do great things in their lives. But over the last few months I have been wondering what we could possibly do to help them achieve their goals even faster, and I think I have found an answer. Starting now, our non-profit group Rolling Robots Outreach will be creating a new stretch challenge goal for our members: to create a new invention and apply for a US Patent before they graduate from High School.
Sounds impossible but others have done it. It’s ambitious, but whether the team is successful or not, this will be their first giant step onto the bridge between their current VEX competition efforts and future careers in robotics, engineering, and other STEM disciplines. It also will be a fun and demanding challenge for students that want to go the extra mile and really push their skills to the next level.
We will be using the Lemelson MIT “JV-Inventeam” methods to train our students. Recently I was trained in the Lemelson MIT methods and met teachers that have taken their students from the classroom to being US Patent Holders using these same methods. We ran a pilot program and were selected as finalist for the InventTeam award , only 36 teams are selected each year.
Meet your instructor: Dr. Kirkman
August Update:
This month has been time of high activity. Most of our team has completed summer school and are ready to put more work into the InvenTeam proposal.
We started by getting educated about the potential users of our device and about how sleep is measured. Our sleep mentor is Dr. Stephen Brown. Dr. Brown runs the sleep clinic at Long Beach Memorial and provided us with a tour of the facility.
Two members of the team attended an event hosted by US Congressman Ted Lieu. Ted Lieu is the Representative for our district and the students wanted to reach out to him for support of this project and invention education for high school students.
The team is in the final days of the proposal process and had the chance to present their ideas to Frank yang, the founder and CEO of Simple Human.
Labor Day Weekend
