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Our 16th Season Update

Our last Reaper’s Digest went out on March 5th, 2020—and a lot has happened since then. Just a week after that email was sent, all of our in-person events were cancelled and we switched to virtual meetings. This has been our "new normal" for a year now!

FIRST is still providing us with opportunities to learn and grow together. At kickoff this year, they presented us with several challenges which could be done remotely. Our team has been working hard on those for the past several weeks. Read on to learn about all the work the team has been doing.

Game Design

In the new Game Design challenge, our team was asked to design our own game. We developed our own concept, game objects, and robot rules.

Introducing: Rapid Restock

In RAPID RESTOCK, a friendly rivalry has built up between two alliances working at the blacksmith shop. Each alliance is working to display the most HORSESHOES for sale (and a little luck also helps).

Alliances must collect HORSESHOES from an ANVIL or their FORGE and hang them on the DISPLAY RACK one at a time. Throughout the match, robots can also stack HORSESHOES on the LUCKY HORSESHOE to increase their odds of selling the HORSESHOES. Near the end of the match, alliances will rush to close shop and hang their HATS on the LUCKY HORSESHOE.

Innovation Challenge

One of the new opportunities presented to us this year was the Innovation Challenge. This was a project where the team was asked to identify a problem or opportunity to help people (or a community of people) keep, regain, or achieve optimum physical and/or mental health and fitness through active play or movement. Once a problem was identified the team had to design a solution.

The problem the team decided to help solve was people who wanted to exercise but didn’t have anyone to work out with. Our solution was to create an App where you can input what type of workouts you like to do and it will match you up with others who have similar interests. The intent is to help people find workout buddies who will encourage each other to reach their goals. The app is called Fitness Buddy and we hope to impress the judges with it.

What’s Next?

Now that we have submitted the above items the next step is judge interviews. These will happen over the next month or so. We are going to start prepping for these interviews now to ensure we are ready to present our ideas to the judges. We are also hosting the Southern New England Advocacy Conference on March 13th and 14th (virtually).

It's been a tough year, but the Green Reapers are as active as ever. We've had a great virtual season so far, and we can't wait to see what comes next!

Special thanks to our sponsors who make this possible: