Team 135 Penn Robotics

Hey all! Penn robotics now has a new website to update you on what we are doing this year! Hope to see you over there

Thank you Northern Electric for donating at the King Level to Penn Robotics!

Thank you Zolman Tire for donating at the King Level to Penn Robotics!

Thank you Spyglass Search for donating at the Knight Level to Penn Robotics!

Thank you Big C Lumber for donating at the Knight Level to Penn Robotics!

Thank you Action Machine Inc. for donating at the Knight Level to Penn Robotics!

Thank you Electronics Inc. for donating at the Knight Level to Penn Robotics!

Thank you Christman Custom Painting for donating at the Knight Level to Penn Robotics!

Thank you Aardvark Home Inspectors for donating at the Knight Level to Penn Robotics!

Thank you An-Mar Wiring Systems for donating at the Squire Level to Penn Robotics!

For the holiday season, Penn Robotics Team 135 partnered up with Beacon health foundation to run an Adapt-a-Thon. Our goal was to give away free adapted toys to children in need and help them experience the magic of the holidays. The toys consists of stuffed animals that make lights, sounds, or movements when a button is pressed. The premise of the event was adapting electronic toys to become compatible with switches (a sensitive button that people with disabilities can activate), so children with disabilities can play with them. We also gave away our custom made switches, which can be hundreds of dollars, for free. As we are approaching the holidays, many children with disabilities will not be able to purchase switch adapted toys that they can interact with due to the astronomical prices of toys and switches from vendors. We hope these toys will allow the children a form of autonomy in their lives, and give inclusivity by allowing them a similar experience and joy like their peers.

Over the past couple of months, Penn Robotics has been working with Joe O’Reilly, Magic Wheelchair, Premier Arts, and various other Penn High School Classes to create a very special project for a very special boy, Zephan Cantu. Zephan has Cerebral Palsy and is bound to a wheelchair. His favorite superhero as well as nickname is The Amazing Hulk, as a testament to all he has gone through due to his disease. 

While this project was a great interdisciplinary opportunity for Penn students to learn new skills and work with groups they wouldn’t otherwise work with, it is more than just an academic project. For five years, Penn Robotics has been working with children with disabilities, and we have encountered the same issue over and over again: the lack of inclusiveness for children with disabilities.

Unfortunately, much of the world is not designed with inclusiveness in mind. The lack of options for Halloween costumes for children in wheelchairs is what lead to the creation of the Magic Wheelchair organization in 2008. While progress has been made since then, there is still very much a demand for products that are made with the disabled community in mind. 

For our fifth consecutive year, Penn Robotics is continuing our philanthropy project, Mission to Engineer. This initiative aims to construct assistive technology (AT) for individuals who do not have the resources to acquire it themselves. Many people may not be able to afford necessary AT that is not covered by insurance because of a loophole in Moore’s Law. 

Moore’s Law’s conclude that technology remaining at the same speed should half in price every two years. This law has made relatively high power technology so cheap that it can be diffused throughout our everyday lives; however, one technology sector that disobeys Moore’s law and does not decrease in price over time is assistive technology. An iPad that has more functions than a simple communication tablet can cost $12,000 less. What many people realized though, was that some simple assistive technology can be made cheaply using basic programming and manufacturing skills. Seeing all the ways that our robotics team has helped disabled children, we decided to start a program called Mission to Engineer. This program seeks to recruit FRC team and connect them with people in need and show their community that FIRST is more than robots

Mission to Engineer Projects