Aloha from Hawaii, home of our next #TeamREV spotlight: FTC Team #14825: Waffles!

Tell us a little bit about your team’s background.

Team Waffles is a 6th-year FTC team (and a 2nd-year FRC Team #9012), organized under Assets High School in Honolulu, Hawaii. Our team consists of 9 members: 7 are female students and 2 are male students. Experience with FIRST on our team ranges from four-year veterans to first-year newbies. Our coaches take a fairly hands-off approach with our team. While they are always available if we need help, they prefer us to sweat it out first. This approach works out nicely because it allows us to explore, create, and learn from our mistakes on our own. Generally, the students decide when the team meetings are, and we self-assign job tasks to members based on their interests and abilities, such as robot engineers, and robot programmers, as well as those that assist with business and public relations needs.

A unique aspect of our team is that we like to build robots for more than just the competition. For example, when the pandemic first started, we went viral across the nation for creating a robot to help deliver diplomas at our high school graduation, as well as building a medical assistive robot for a local hospital to assist with food and medicine delivery. We actively plan FIRST Robotics expos at various locations and events, such as at local libraries, shopping centers, and various festivals. 

Other than actively representing FIRST and Hawaii FIRST Robotics as an FTC/FRC Team, we aim to grow an appreciation for science, technology, engineering, and math inside and outside of our community. As of 2023, we have assisted with starting 3 rookie FTC Teams and will continue to assist them along the way. We want to support other robotics organizations that aim to encourage people about STEM and STEM education. Our mission is to support other FTC teams in a way that helps foster sustainable, long-lasting relationships.

Currently, other than being a part of #TeamREV, we are sponsored by BAE Systems, NASA (sponsoring our FRC  team), CACI, and the Gene Haas Foundation. 

Our robot's name this year is called "Sulley", featuring the Disney movie character from "Monsters Inc". As such, our team mascot this year is Sulley!

What are a few achievements your team is proud of this season?

• At the Hawaii League Tournament, we ended the event as Rank 1 throughout our state for the regular season. We also received the Connect Award and the Motivate Award. 
• At the Hawaii State Championship, we received the Connect Award, the Motivate Award, and Finalist Alliance Award. 
• We are proud of our many outreach initiatives, including starting 3 rookie FTC teams, and having 750+ hours collectively as a team just for outreach projects reaching over 11,000 people.
• We have posted a Robot Reveal Video, which we believe to be the only fully-animated robot reveal video to date!
• We are also proud of our Team Captain, Emily, who is this year's Dean's List Finalist for the FTC Hawaii Region! Emily will be representing our state at FIRST Championship in April 2024.

What has your team been working on recently?

• We are very proud of all the accomplishments our FTC team made as well as all the new things we learned this year. We are shifting our focus from FTC to FRC, while continuing to conduct our many outreach events that start this month.
• Lately, we have been collaborating with potential mentors from New Zealand! Our goal is to start more FTC teams in their region for next year's FTC season.

What is your team enjoying within the #TeamREV Sponsorship Program?

We enjoy working with all other teams and mentors and collaborating with them. Through this program, we learn so much and get feedback when we are stuck, such as when our team has programming needs. The REV Robotics community is amazing, and we love everyone that is a part of #TeamREV!!

We are honored to have a team that passionately supports FTC programs in Oceania as part of #TeamREV! Follow Team Waffles (and the Assets Robotics community) on these platforms:

• Website
• Instagram
• YouTube