Florida News
GAINESVILLE TO HOLD INDIA FEST APRIL 2
Presented by the India Cultural & Education Center, the India Fest will be held on Saturday, April 2. It will be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Bo Diddley Plaza, 111 E. University Ave., Gainesville. There will be Indian food, music/dance, fashion, jewelry, etc.
For information, email [email protected] or visit www.icec-florida.org
TAMPA BAY AREA STUDENT ROBOTICS TEAM (IVYWARRIORS) HEADING TO STATE CHAMPIONSHIP
FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) a program within FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), helps students (ages 12-18) learn to think like engineers. Teams design, build, and code robots to compete in an alliance format against other teams. They work on developing autonomous and driver-controllable robot to complete missions on a thematic playing field. Robots are built from a reusable platform, powered by Android technology, and can be coded using a variety of levels of Java based programming. Teams also work on other areas, including creating an engineering notebook, business and sustainable plan, team goals for the season, fundraising, and outreach and engagement with engineering community, mentors, and also with non-technical community.
With all the uncertainty, the new FTC 2021-2022 season began last year in September. Even through the pandemic, FTC Team #16716 IvyWarriors, a student community robotics team from Odessa, continued to follow and develop their passion for engineering and robotics. After almost six months of hard work and perseverance, the team has advanced to the Florida State Championship by winning first place in the Tampa Bay Regional League Championship in Lakeland, attended by 16 teams on Feb 2. At the Florida State Championship, which will held at the Advent Fieldhouse in Winter Haven on March 4-5, they will compete against 48 other teams from Florida to win a spot for entering the FIRST World Festival in Houston in April.
IvyWarriors consists of eight high school students (Sahil Vaswani, Joshua Selvan, Rohil Agarwal, Vineet Sharma, Ananth Kutuva, Nikhil Padi, Neil Babu, and Avaneesh Venkatesh). These youths come from different schools in the Tampa Bay area, including Land O’ Lakes IB High, Berkley Prep, Hillsborough High, Strawberry Crest High, and Robinson IB High School. The team is supported by two coaches (Abhay Vaswani and Tamil Gurusamy) along with other mentors. To qualify for the prestigious State Championship, the team has worked tirelessly over the past six months to build a robot that completes all tasks relatively efficiently with consistency. This year specifically, the team learned how to implement artificial intelligence (AI) to maximize their score, a feat that only few teams have accomplished.
For more information, visit https://ftc16716.wordpress.com/ and FIRST website at https://www.firstinspires.org/