Robotics Continues Strong Despite Obstacles

The COVID-19 pandemic presented many challenges to the schools and programs the i.am Angel Foundation supports, and robotics was one hit the hardest.

Due to COVID guidelines and restrictions, most of our teams weren’t able to meet in person, which meant participating in robotics at full scale was impossible. However, that didn’t stop some of our teams from shifting focus and figuring out other ways to stay engaged.

The TerraWatts, FRC team 6904, registered in the FIRST Innovation Challenge this year, a virtual competition which challenged their team to identify a problem within their community around physical and mental health, and drafting up a solution in a business model plan to present in front of judges.

The Compton Unified School District continued to offer FIRST LEGO League teams a chance to compete virtually, distributing robots to student homes and having teams work on project presentations virtually. Our local partner UBTECH Robotics also donated more robots to us, which we used to distribute to school partners so students could take them home and program remotely.

The challenges presented by the pandemic were difficult, but we’re happy to have innovative partners who can rise up and find a way to continue engagement.