What are the Awards and How Do We Get Them?

General Award Advice

Most likely your team’s portfolio will fulfill many of these rewards requirements. The thing is, many other teams will also fulfill these requirements. This means that in order to get an award your team will have to also fulfill the recommendations and go above and beyond the requirements. Its also a good idea to decide which award(s) your team is going for early on in the season so that you have adequate time to work on it.

ENs and Portfolios

ENs (engineering notebooks) are recommended for all teams to keep track of things that can be put in your portfolio and are also submitted to help with teams’ chances of getting awards. ENs are also a great way to keep track of your team’s progress and to help you with your next steps. It’s important to know though that ENs are not portfolios.

Presentations

Another critical step in obtaining an award is the presentation to judges. Towards the end of the season, volunteer judges will hear out your team’s presentation (you should be presenting a slideshow that is separate from your portfolio or EN) and evaluate if your team should receive an award. Be sure to practice with your team beforehand and be ready to answer questions.

The Awards

Inspire Award

The Inspire Award is given to teams that have generally good portfolios and inspire others. This award is given to a team that is also a top contender for many of the other awards and for that reason is considered to be one of the highest awards.

Requirements:

  • Team has a portfolio that is good
    • Contains robot design description
    • Contains info about the team and their plan
    • Is well organized

Recommendations:

  • Inspires Judges to ask about specific information

Think Award

The Think Award can be earned by showing a deep understanding of the underlying science, mathematics, and game strategies and being knowledgeable about general engineering information.

Requirements:

  • Portfolio has engineering content
  • Portfolio provides examples that show the Team has a clear understanding of the engineering design process including an example of lessons learned

Recommendations:

  • Inspires Judges to ask about detailed engineering information
  • Summarizes lessons learned from outreach and the process of building the robot
  • Includes plans to develop skills among team members

Connect Award

This award is earned by displaying a strong show of acquiring new skills, networking, and outreach.

Requirements:

  • Portfolio contains team plan (should be connected to outreach)
  • includes a summary of how they acquired new mentors or acquired new knowledge and expertise from their mentors

Recommendations:

  • Centered around outreach and networking

Innovate Award:

This award is given to the team that has the most innovative and creative robot design (also take into consideration game plan).

Requirements:

  • Engineering portfolio includes examples of the teams engineering content as well as how they arrived at their solutions
  • Robot or robot sub-assembly must be creative, elegant, and unique in its design
  • Creative component must be stable, robust, and work reliably.

Recommendations:

  • Inspires Judges to ask about the team’s innovation and design

Control Award

Given to a team that exhibits excellent use of sensors and software to increase the robots functionality. Think of this award like the innovate award, but for sensors and software (instead of physical robot design).

Requirements:

  • Must submit an application for this award
  • Engineering portfolio documents control components
    • and show how they enhance the robots functionality

Recommendations:

  • Advanced software techniques and algorithms
  • Portfolio documents lessons learned related to control components

Motivate Award

Given to a team who motivates others to join First and echos First’s philosophy.

Requirements:

  • Engineering Portfolio describes:
    • future goals and the steps they will take to reach those goals
    • team identity
    • fund-raising goals
    • sustainability goals
    • timelines
    • outreach
    • finances
    • community service goals.
  • Team must be able to explain the individual contributions of each team member, and how these apply to the overall success of the team

Recommendations:

  • This team creatively markets First
  • Clearly show the successful recruitment of people who were not already active within the STEM community
  • summarize experiences and lessons learned from outreach
  • Provide evidence of outreach where applicable

Design Award

The Design Award is presented to teams that incorporate industrial design elements into their solution.

Requirements:

  • Engineering Portfolio must contain CAD images or Robot drawings of components or the entire robot

Recommendations:

  • Design is distinguished from others through aesthetics or function
  • Design is consistent with team plan
  • Inspires judges to ask about specific components

Sources:

All information on this page was taken from this year’s game manual (starts page 48) and FTC’s official awards description page and the appendixes from the judge’s manual.