This story begins in 2018 when Degrees of Freedom (DoF), a community FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team from Chandler, AZ that is part of the Si Se Puede Foundation, was featured in an episode of the PBS Kid's show, SciGirls. The episode follows four students from the robotics team as they help a local food bank optimize their packing process for a new project called Meals to Grow. First, these students learn about industrial engineering, the discipline focused on improving different processes. They do this through a hands-on and exploratory activity and with a factory tour to see how chocolate is made. After learning about industrial engineering, the DoF students work with the Meals to Grow coordinator to improve their process efficiency. Meals to Grow wanted to fill backpacks with meals and snacks and distribute them to middle and high school students in the area. DoF used industrial engineering to make packing faster and increase the number of backpacks they could pack.

The SciGirls episode about Degrees of Freedom, FIRST Robotics Competition team 6413 from Chandler, AZ.

Now we travel to Gainesville, FL. There, a teacher at P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School showed this SciGirls episode to her students and asked them to write some questions that they might ask to the four girls featured in the episode. What the teacher didn't tell her students was that she sent the questions to the DoF team. Imagine their surprise when they discovered that their questions were answered by the SciGirls themselves! The students at P.K. Yonge were so grateful that they created a thank you video for the Degrees of Freedom students.

A student at P.K. Yonge demonstrating the Degrees of Freedom hand symbol.

After hearing about the work the students at P.K. Yonge were doing in the area of assistive technology (AT) in Florida, Degrees of Freedom began looking to see how they could get involved with AT projects in Arizona. To start, they reached out to ACCEL, a nonprofit organization in Phoenix, AZ for people with developmental disabilities, to see if they had any AT needs. ACCEL invited the team to their school and introduced them to the types of technology that they use with their students.

When DoF saw that ACCEL didn’t have many toys for the students to play with in the pool, the team came up with a great idea! DoF was already planning on teaching their new robotics students how to solder by having them build a PVC pipe submarine. Why not adapt these submarines so that the students from ACCEL could use them? That’s exactly what they did!

To deliver these PVC submarines, Degrees of Freedom decided to invite the students from ACCEL to be their VIP guests at the AZ West FRC Regional, an annual robotics competition. The ACCEL students had the opportunity to watch robots complete in matches and visit the pits to see the robots up close.

During their visit, DoF invited the students from ACCEL to their pit where DoF presented them with the submarines that they adapted. The ACCEL students took the submarines back to their school and had a blast playing with them.

Photos of DoF, FRC team 6413, with the students from ACCEL at the AZ West FRC Regional.

Daniel Frank is an Assistant Teaching Professorr at Arizona State University. During the pandemic, he began to write short stories recounting the tales of different robotics teams he had previously worked with. He shared these stories with his team to encourage them to keep working hard during such uncertain times and has graciously shared this one with EngineerGirl.

If you have any inspiring stories of your own to share, we'd love to hear about and post them! Please share them with EngineerGirl@nae.edu.