Team 3616 received the Impact Award which is the most prestigious award FIRST Robotics Competition gives to a team that best exemplifies the mission of FIRST Robotics.
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Lafayette Parish high school students built a modified bike pedal, made sensors and programmed a microprocessor to help a little boy with a prosthetic leg ride a bike like his peers, and now their idea has garnered global recognition.
Team 3616 Phenomena ranked as one of 20 robotics teams out of 870 worldwide with its Innovation Project, placing them in the top 2% in the world in the 2021 FIRST Innovation Challenge. It s a bicycle add-on kit that allows children with an impaired leg or compromised leg to bike-ride like other kids, said Hailey Menard, recent graduate of Ovey Comeaux High School on the team.
There is a square practice field marked in blue painter s tape on the floor of a classroom at the W. D. & Mary Baker Smith Career Center in Lafayette. On Monday, a 20-pound metal robot navigates the field, rolling on its wheels toward flat orange rings that it will scoop up with a silver arm.
It sucks up the ring and launches it out toward a three-part goal, aiming each time for either the low, middle or high hole to earn points. The FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robot also can pick up and carry a wobble item from one square to another.