North Central FTC Regional Qualifier

The Judge's Award is given at the discretion of the judges to a team they have encountered whose unique efforts, performance or dynamics merit recognition, yet the team does not fit into any of the existing award categories.

This judged award celebrates the team that exemplifies the essence of the FIRST Tech Challenge competition through team spirit and enthusiasm. They show their spirit through costumes and fun outfits, a team cheer or outstanding spirit. This team has also made a collective effort to make FIRST known throughout their school and community.

This judged award is given to the team that most connected with their local community and the engineering community. A true FIRST team is more than a sum of its parts, and recognizes that their schools and communities play an essential part to their success. The recipient of this award is recognized for helping the community understand FIRST, the FIRST Tech Challenge, and the team itself. The team that wins this award is aggressively seeking engineers and exploring the opportunities available in the world of engineering, science and technology. In addition, this team has a clear fundraising goal and plan to achieve that goal.

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.

This judged award recognizes design elements of the robot that are both functional and aesthetic. All successful robots have innovative design aspects; however, the PTC Design Award is presented to teams that incorporate industrial design elements into their solution. These design elements could simplify the robot’s appearance by giving it a clean look, be decorative in nature, or otherwise express the creativity of the team. The winning design should not compromise the practical operation of the robots but complement its purpose. This award is sponsored by Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC), developers of the CAD tools, Pro/ENGINEER and Mathcad. PTC gives licenses to the FTC student teams for these software products to help them with their designs. Use of these tools is not required to be eligible, however, teams that use them in their design are given extra consideration for this award.

This judged award is given to the team that best reflects the “journey” the team took as they experienced the engineering design process during the build season. The Engineering Notebook is the key reference for judges to help identify the most deserving team. The team’s Engineering Notebook should focus on the design and build stage of the team’s robot. Journal entries of interest to judges for this award will include those describing the steps, brainstorms, designs, re-designs, successes, and those ‘interesting moments’ when things weren’t going as planned. A team will not be a candidate for this award if they have not completed the section of the Engineering Notebook describing the team’s experience.

This formally judged award is given to the team that truly embodied the ‘challenge’ of the FTC program. The team that receives this award is chosen by the judges as having best represented a ‘role model’ FIRST Tech Challenge Team. This team is a top contender for all other judging categories and is a strong competitor on the field. The Inspire Award Winner is an inspiration to other teams, acting with Gracious Professionalism™ both on and off the playing field. This team understands how to communicate their experiences and knowledge to other teams, sponsors, and the judges.