Category: awards

Rockwell Collins Innovate Award

Award and Description

Bringing great ideas from concept to reality.
The Rockwell Collins Innovate Award celebrates a team that not only thinks outside the box, but also has the ingenuity and inventiveness to make their designs come to life. This judged award is given to the team that has the most innovative and creative robot design solution to any or all specific field elements or components in the FIRST Tech Challenge game. Elements of this award include elegant design, robustness, and ‘out of the box’ thinking related to design. This award may address the design of the whole robot, or of a sub-assembly attached to the robot. The creative component must work consistently, but a robot does not have to work all the time during matches to be considered for this award. The team’s Engineering Notebook should be marked with journal entries to show the design of the component(s) and the team’s robot in order to be eligible for this award, and entries should describe succinctly how the team arrived at that solution.

Criteria

Required criteria for the Rockwell Collins Innovate Award:
 Team must demonstrate respect and Gracious Professionalism® towards everyone they encounter at an FIRST Tech Challenge event.
 Team must submit an Engineering Notebook with an Engineering Section that documents the design process and how the team arrived at their design solution.
 Robot or robot sub-assembly must be elegant and unique in its design.
 Creative component must be stable, robust, and work reliably.
 Robot design is efficient and consistent with team plan and strategy.


Inspire Award

Award and Description

This judged award is given to the team that truly embodied the ‘challenge’ of the FIRST® Tech Challenge program. The team that receives this award is a strong ambassador for FIRST programs and a role model FIRST Tech Challenge team. This team is a top contender for many other judged awards and is a gracious competitor. The Inspire Award Winner is an inspiration to other teams, acting with Gracious Professionalism® both on and off the playing field. This team is able to communicate their experiences, enthusiasm and knowledge to other teams, sponsors, their community, and the Judges. Working as a unit, this team will have demonstrated success in accomplishing the task of designing and building a robot.
The winner of the Inspire Award at each tournament level has received an automatic invitation to the next tournament level. Once a team has won an Inspire Award at a Championship, they are no longer eligible to win the Inspire Award at additional championship tournaments they may attend. Similarly, once a team wins an Inspire Award at a Qualifying tournament or League Championship, they are no longer eligible to win the Inspire Award at subsequent Qualification tournaments or League Championships within the same region.

Criteria

Required criteria for the Inspire Award:
• Team must demonstrate respect and Gracious Professionalism® toward everyone they encounter at an FIRST Tech Challenge event.
• Team is a strong contender for several other Judged awards. The Inspire Award celebrates the strongest qualities of all the Judged Awards.
• The Team is an ambassador for FIRST programs and demonstrates and documents their work in their community.
• Team dynamic is positive and inclusive, and each team member contributes to the success of the team.
• Engineering Notebook must be submitted, and must include an Engineering Section, a Team Section and a Business or Strategic Plan. The entire Engineering Notebook must be high quality, thoughtful, thorough, detailed and well organized.
• Robot design is creative and innovative, and the robot performs reliably on the field. Team communicates clearly about their robot design and strategy to the judges.
• Team presentation is professional and engaging.