2007-12-27T13:43:00.000-08:00

MisCar's system approach for
moving FIRST Forward

Introduction

Team1574 – MisCar: Moving FIRST Forward
MisCar is the robotic team from Misgav High School. Our school is the Israeli leader in Robotic Education.

Pupils from our school won the World Champion during the 2006 fire-fighting home robot contest in Hartford Connecticut, and the first place in the knowledge Olympiad. Our educational approach includes: Collaboration between the Mechatronics and

Electronics departments, students' engagement in project based learning, infusing creative thinking skills, and implementing portfolio assessment. We focus on system engineering design approach rather than teaching about components and knowledge.

Our Previous Awards
This is the 6th year we've been participating in FIRST. In 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 we were the 1st Regional Winners and participated in the Championship in Atlanta. In 2006 we won additionally the RadioShack Innovation in Control Award and the Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers Entrepreneurship award, and the Woodie Flowers Award.

In 2007 we won the Motorola Quality Award. In Atlanta 2007 we reached the 2nd place in the Newton arena which means we were in the 2nd rank in the world among 12 other teams.

In 2008, we recieved the Autodesk Inventor Award in addition to 1st Regional Winners. In Atlanta 2008, we were Newton finalist.
In 2009, we were ranked in the 3rd place in our regional and did not won. But, we won the 1st place in the Autodesk Inventor Award.

Team Spirit
Each year we adopt several teams, most of them are rookie teams. In previous years we assisted team Team 1946 from Tamra, Team 2210 from Yarka, Team 2213 from Nahariya, Team 2215 from Akko, and Team 2214 from Yemin Orde.

In addition we are assisting Misgav LEGO-League team and creating activities for our Nitsanim children.

Community of Learners
Our team fosters collaboration among pupils, teachers, parents, industry and the local community. We strongly recommend every team to foster brainstorming in such a group. Creating our robot has been in the last five years a fascinating system design process, in which many pupils' ideas were developed, some failed, and some were the causes for our success. Our robot in the previous years was able to accomplish all the challenge's sub-tasks.

Collaboration with industries

In 2008, MisCar students were able not only to send via e-mails full detailed drafts to manufacturing department in three different factories but also to design 3d models that assisted the team in thinking about alternatives and choose among different solutions.

Our system design approach lead us again in constructing an amazing bot that was able to drive 3 m/sec and push most of the robots in our regional out of its way while fulfilling all sub-mission tasks.

FIRST – For Inspiration and Recognition of Science & Technology is an international program which 1300 schools around the world participate in. This contest had been founded in the United States, and was introduced in Israel 3 years ago. Each year, a different task is given to which robots that are built by students have to most efficiently comply. The students are given a timeframe of six weeks, for designing and building a fully working robot, based on a basic kit of parts and a set of rules. After the completion of the building process a Regional contest is held in Nukia stadium in Tel Aviv. The Regional's winning teams receive the opportunity of competing in the Championships in Atlanta, Georgia.

Team 1574: MisCar - Moving FIRST Forward