MAIN ESSAY

I. Our history

From the start: We are the team FRC5800, the first FRC team from the state of Santa
Catarina, Brazil. Created and started back at the end of 2015, when two students from a
public school in our city, Florianópolis, took the initiative to create a team with the hope of
teaching and expanding STEAM in Brazil. With the help of AIDTEC (International
Association for Technological Development), a nongovernmental association that enabled us
to accomplish all the legal requirements to start our team, they brought together a group of
twenty high school students and soon started to shape the Magic Island Robotics team.

First achievements: In our first year of competition, we became the first Brazilian team to win
the Rookie All-Star Award​, ​which stimulated us to continue improving our performance and
prompted us to spread our knowledge of the field, by helping other teams to follow our path
and becoming the next Rookie All-Star winners. In 2017, the team 6404, with guidance from
our team, won this award and in 2018 the team 6902 accomplished the same.

CRC: During our off-season in 2016, we went to the China Robotics Competition to mentor
new teams and by doing so, we won the Inspiration Award, which meant a great deal for the
team, as it helped us get recognition from our City Council. From then on, the team
continued to pursue its main goal: promoting robotics and encouraging other people to join
the STEAM community.

II. Our progress

Improving our capabilities: Along our 3 years of competition, we have been making progress
as a team. An example would be the fact that, in 2018, we managed to achieve the best
result during a competition in our team's history.

Improving our robot: Despite our fair ranking in 2018, we still wished to design a better robot,
which led us to, during the off-season, build a brand new robot, satisfying all the Power Up's
requirements.

Improving our team: Throughout the years, to improve the work of our team and team
members, we have been implementing changes in our team’s structure. As of 2018, the
team consists of 31 students and 7 mentors, divided into 5 areas: engineering,
programming, marketing, finances, and external events. Each area has its own sub-areas
that are divided according to the members’ needs.

III. Impacts within our community

In 2018, our team wished to focus on expanding the experience of being a part of FIRST in
order to popularize the competition inside our country, and we managed to reach that goal
through a diversity of actions:
Live transmission: Our team set up the first ever live broadcast in Portuguese of the
competition. This enabled everyone in Brazil and other Portuguese-speaking countries to get
a better view of the competition, allowing FIRST to grow and become more popular around
the world. In the future of the team, we will keep doing the live transmissions and plan to
continue improving the project.

IFSC Itinerante: Our team was invited by the Federal Institute of Santa Catarina to visit
dozens of public schools across the state to teach robotics, using FLL material, and
introduce the team to people that had never had the contact with STEAM areas. In total
1525 students were given the opportunity to participate in workshops and 2129 attended our
seminars, in 19 different cities in our state. That is, at least 3654 people were able to learn
robotics through an easy and fun way. By going to all 8 regions of our state, we intended to
reach as many people as we could with the goal of disseminating the values and messages
of FIRST.

SEPEI: The Education, Research, Extension and Innovation Seminar (SEPEI) is a yearly
event that is held with the purpose of displaying projects created by students from the
Federal Institute of Santa Catarina. In 2018, our team was a part of the event and organized
a diversity of activities to promote technology and robotics.

During the event, we brought together the teams 1772, 6902 and 7033 to participate in an
FRC workshop focusing on introducing FIRST to the public through simple and fun activities,
making the competition more popular in our community. The participants learned what we
do, how and why we do it, starting by participating in FLL workshops for all ages and
introducing 3D sketching through ​SolidWorks​ by holding interactive classes of the platform.

Throughout the workshop, 5800 created a tournament, similar to the competition held by
FIRST, in which LEGO teams were created to participate. Those teams had to come up with
a solution, through robotics, for the problem of the lack of safety on the roads and try to use
those solutions to fix it. This tournament showed the participants the importance of robotics
as a tool to stimulate people to search for answers to everyday problems in our society. After
the tournament was finished, some of the teams, which were created exclusively to
compete, decided to keep their teams and continue competing in robotics competitions in
Brazil and even build their own FRC teams.

Academic events: The team participated in several academic events with the purpose of
spreading our knowledge to the academic community, which regularly dismisses the fact that
it is possible to put into practice all the theory that is taught in schools and universities. Some
examples, among the events we've attended: SNCT (National Week of Science and
Technology) and SEURS (Extension Seminars of Southern Universities), in which our team
hosted workshops and classes in which thousands of people from all ages participated.

More girls in our team: The school which most of our members attend and where we are
based, the Federal Institute of Santa Catarina, is known for its excellent technical courses
involving several areas of STEAM. However, the school brings an unfortunate issue: the lack
of incentive for girls to be a part of the courses, which is a factor that affects our team
directly. Regardless of this issue in the school system, our team's inequality rate has only
been decreasing throughout the seasons. From last season to this one, we tripled the
number of girls in our team. By bringing more girls on board, we wish to stimulate women to
join the STEAM community and help show that there is nothing they dream of that cannot be
achieved.

IV. FIRST Community

Vision Processing and PID: Our programming team also made great strides towards the
improvement of the robot's systems and the team as a whole. We are now able to use
technologies such as vision processing systems and PID, which were developed and tested
solemnly by our students during the off-season period. Inside Brazil's FIRST Community we
are pioneers in these technologies’ development, and we also intend to be the first Brazilian
team to have ever used them at an FRC Competition.

Contact with other teams: Keeping in touch with other FRC teams is imperative to us, as we
are all deeply involved in helping one another. That’s why 5800 values a healthy relationship
with other teams. Among the teams we keep in contact with, most of the Brazilian FRC
teams make the list, such as 1772, 6902, 7033, 6404 and 1382. Brazil is a country that
undervalues technology and science, so keeping in touch with other Brazilian teams is
important as it is a way for us to brainstorm, together, new ideas to make robotics more
accessible to everyone in our country. Besides the Brazilian teams, we also keep in contact
with multiple international teams, such as 694, 6510, 4613 and 2265.

Mentoring Brazilian teams: In order to motivate other brazilian FRC teams to continue their
work, our team has been mentoring some of them, such as 6902 and 7033, and regardless
of the thousands of kilometers between us, we’ve been helping them achieve their goals and
dreams.

Being a reference to other FRCs: Even though we are a relatively new team, we take great
pride in our work as we are recognized for it by teams all around the world, who contact us
to learn about the diverse types of technologies and marketing strategies we use.

V. Qualifying our students

How 5800 capacitates and qualifies our high school students is extremely enriching, and of
great importance to the team, as it offers the youth training to enter the job market in the
future. This kind of training, especially in Brazil, is highly difficult to find.

The training extends beyond theory. The experience our students go through by being part
of the team improves their own academic performance, as our mentors and older students
are always willing to offer guidance and advice. This factor is reflected through our past
students who are constantly passing the most difficult classification exams and getting into
the most competitive university courses. Besides that, several of our old students, after
being a part of 5800, decided to create new STEAM projects and grow their own intellects
outside of the team.

VI. How we represent Arts through our team

With the inclusion of Arts in STEM, our team decided to explore the area by expanding our
marketing division. In 2018, we tripled the number of students in the division and developed
more advanced sub-areas such as photography, videography, translation, design and web
managing, among others. Our marketing team then worked to create a new brand for 5800,
which has been helping our team become more popular within our community and across
the country.

VII. Our Mission

Throughout the 3 years that we’ve been part of FIRST, the feeling that helped us achieve
our biggest goals has remained. We continue, by disseminating robotics, as well as the
values of FIRST, such as coopertition and gracious professionalism, to honor our mission of
being a gateway for young people to enter the STEAM community. 5800 is not just an FRC
team, we are a symbol to remind people that their dreams don’t belong just in their heads,
they belong in laboratories and big corporations, where they can improve science and
technology and help move the world forward.