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Help Send RoboGals to Olympics

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Help send the World Robot Olympiad USA Robotics Champions to the World Championships in Qatar!

Why we love robotics!
This is a story of two Aurora, IL girls (ages 9 and 10) who have a great interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and found their love for robotics competition this Summer.  After meeting for the first time in June, 2015 Kaiya and Jensie became friends right away. They are a perfect match with Kaiya's mechanical engineering aptitude and Jensie's superb programming skills. That same day they registered for the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) competition with the team name, RoboGals. Four months later, they are National WRO Champions invited to go to the World Championships in Qatar!

The World Robot Olympiad is a global LEGO Robotics competition. It is an event that brings young people from all over the world together.This year over 50 countries with nearly 20,000 teams are participating in this event. Each participating country has its own competition and the best teams are invited to compete at the World Robot Olympiad World Championships in Qatar.  http://www.wroboto.org/

The category that the RoboGals entered is the Regular Elementary Category where competitors design, build and program a LEGO robot to navigate a 94" x 40" playing field, push colored blocks, detect block colors and accurately drop ping pong balls in a scoring zone. Team with the highest score wins with fastest time as a tiebreaker. The RoboGals scored a perfect 100 at the Illnois State Regional on August 22 and did the same at the National Championships on Sept 19. Other National competitiors also scored 100 points but the RoboGals robot completed the challenge twice as fast as the second place team.  This was done with a totally redesigned robot that competed at Regionals. Their drive to win and thier passion for robotics enabled them to work tirelessly to build and design a winning robot.

But the road has not been easy.....

Over the last 4 months, Kaiya and Jensie worked almost every day prototyping, building and testing their robot. Pizza was a dinner staple and other priorities took a back seat.  

Their first robot was a slow moving robot that used tank treads and a large ping pong ball holder. They decided on this design because the robot needed to climb over a short wall and they felt that this robot would be more reliable and accurate. They were right. Their robot was the only robot to score the maximum 100 points at the Illnois State Regional.  But after doing research, they needed a faster robot for Nationals.

So they decided to scrap the first robot design and build one that could read multiple colored blocks with mechnical arms with sensors. This was risky and ended up a nightmare to get right. Between the size limitation and figuring out how to use gears for the mechanical arms, the robot went through many revisions.  Many times they almost gave up.  But they knew they had to build this type of robot to win.  "Go Big or Go Home". Their perseverence shined through and it was only a week before Nationals where they had a somewhat workable design. More late nights and Coca-Cola helped them finalize a robot that was reliable and fast!

National Championship Run!!!

Big props to Kaiya and Jensie's parents for being right beside them every night and to Chasewood Learning for providing the Robotics mentorship and practice facitilies.  http://chasewoodlearning.com


Why $8,000?

The money will be used for travel expenses to send 5 people: team members, parents and coaches to Qatar. So far all expenses have been out of pocket by parents and coaches.

Travel Estimates
5 coach seat tickets from Chicago to Qatar: $5000
5 night stay - 3 basic rooms: $2,250
Meals, ground transportation and incidentals: $750

5 coach tickets from Chicago to China: $4000
5 nights stay - 3 basic rooms: $2250
Meals, ground transportation and incidentals: $750


Why donate?
We are a passionate team wanting to accept the invite to go to Qatar and represent the USA but funding this type of effort can be difficult.  We are putting in the time, sweat and less than parent approved eating habits to the day we leave.  Any donation will help relieve the burden on our team and is greatly appreciated.  We will keep you updated on our results.  

If we exceed our goal, any additional funds will be reinvested as continued support for the girls for future competitions as they hope to continue on to bigger adventures in robotics.

If we miss our goal, Chasewood Learning will work hard as their sole sponsor to source the funds needed to fill the financial gap.  
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Donations 

  • Jacob Marshall
    • $5
    • 8 yrs
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Organizer

William Wong
Organizer
Aurora, IL

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