Robotics team awarded for community outreach – Bristol Press

Operation PEACCE Robotics

Operation PEACCE Robotics, of Bristol, with their robot Hailstorm.

Posted: Monday, March 20, 2017 10:41 pm | Updated: 10:53 pm, Mon Mar 20, 2017.

Robotics team awarded for community outreach

BRISTOL Operation PEACCE Robotics recently won the Engineering Inspiration Award when they brought their robot, Hailstorm, to a First Robotics competition in Massachusetts.

The award celebrates outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering within a teams school and community.

In order to win this award, a team had to make significant strides in getting the First Robotics message out to the community by developing and running youth teams, engaging in community events and reaching out to the public, explained Elaine Pelizzari, team mentor. Our aggressive recruiting efforts and growth as a team seemed to win the judges over and our kids are enormously proud of their accomplishment. They are wearing their medals all over town.

Winning this award was overwhelming to be honest, said Carol Pelizzari, chief of sponsor relations and Elaine Pelizzaris daughter. It was the first time our team won an award related to something other than the robot.

The team reached out to the community at a variety of events last year in Hartford and Litchfield Counties, including the Northwest CT Chamber of Commerce Family Festival at Goshen Fair Grounds, the Rockwell Park Summer Festival Aug. 20 in Bristol, the Watertown Fall Festival at Veterans Memorial Park in Watertown Sept. 17, the Bristol Mum Festival Sept. 23 and 24 on Memorial Boulevard, the Harwinton Fair Sept. 30 through Oct. 20 and finally the Wild About Animals program at Imagine Nation Museum Oct. 29.

Operation PEACCEs robot for this years competition is named Hailstorm because it can rapidly fire balls that it picks up into a hopper as part of this years Steampunk (a retro-future science fiction genre and clothing style) themed robotics competition. The robot was also designed to be versatile, able to climb into a mock airship as another way to score points.

It is interesting to see the issues that teams faced at the competition, said Johnny Chea, another team member. It was a chance to see the importance of completing one task to get points over another. We actually found that shooting balls into the hopper wasnt as important so we had to scrap our aiming system to make the robot better at picking up gears. We will be given six hours to make adjustments to our robot before the next competition. With that, we will design a better climber.

The team, which includes 37 students from Bristol and the surrounding community, about 40 percent of which are home schooled, also redesigned their teams logo to include gears and a top hat with goggles to fit the Steampunk theme. Some of the students wear Steampunk themed costumes at the events, some of which include hand-made robot angel wings.

Its all about showing our team spirit, said Chea.

Brian M. Johnson can be reached at 860-973-1806 or bjohnson@bristolpress.com.

Posted in Bristol Press, News, Bristol on Monday, March 20, 2017 10:41 pm. Updated: 10:53 pm.

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Robotics team awarded for community outreach - Bristol Press