Terabyte Victory at Qualifier

Mascot Dave, Will, Sterling and Britton- L to R

Our team emerged victorious from the qualifying round on January 5. We spent five hours preparing the night  before, surviving on fruit snacks and Cheezits. After getting up at 6:00 a.m. to go to the competition, we saw that we had plenty of pit space and we ran home to get our field table.

Since there were no extra practice tables, It was very helpful to have our own table with us. As the scoreboard shows, our first robot round was a complete disaster.

Terabytes on top

Things went wrong at every turn, and we ended up getting only 75 points. Our third round was also less than stellar, but we got a respectable 195 points. Our true triumph was the second round, when we came away with the top score of 295 points which the earned us the "Robot Performance" award.

WIll and Sterling (Britton had to leave before trophies were awarded)

Our judging sessions also went well. Our robot attracted the attention of several teams, and the judges also liked our designs and ideas. The project judges fell in love with our FallSafe, and they told us to start a company to make the product someday. (We were surprised by this). We also did well in our Core Values judging.

Check out our swag!

Due to our great performance in all areas, we also received the "Champion" award. Overall, our first level of competition went very well. We will be going to the state level of competition on January 26.

Fall Safe Effectiveness Diagram

We all drew diagrams of how the Fall Safe would work. The team chose William's drawing to represent our idea. Thousands of seniors fall and break bones each year. The hardest to recover from and live independently is the hip fracture. Many seniors who break a hip never regain their mobility. Our Fall Safe is a portable air bag belt worn around the hips that will deploy in a fall to cushion the pelvis and prevent fractures.

Benefits of Wearing Fall Safe

1. Protect hips from fracture
2. Improve quality of life by helping seniors be more mobile
3. Security and confidence in wearer that they are safe from fracture
4. Save on medical costs and extended care

Disadvantages  of Fall Safe

1. User must actively wear product
2. Does not protect head or arms
3. must be repacked after deployment

The Fall Test

Sterling takes a dive

While discussing the potential need for our product, we figured it would be a good idea to test the physics of falling. Plus it sounded fun to push each other over. Luckily we had a nice soft bag to fall on. We all took turns being the fall victim.

Will took a backward tumble

Britton got bounced on his hip

Brainstorming Product Names

Every product needs to have a catchy and memorable name that also describes what it is or does.  Our personal air bag deserves a good name, so at one of our meetings we threw out all the names we could think of. All names were considered and some of them made us laugh. Some names were too silly to merit strong consideration. Our top choice was Fall Safe. All our possibilities are listed below.

The Good

1. Fall Safe
2. Hip Saver
3. Hip Shield
4. Hip Keeper
5. Crash Guard

The  Mediocre

1. Fracture Friend
2. Body Bumper
3. Balloon Belt
4. Slip Stopper
5. Hip Guard

The Bad

1. Bone Balloon
2. Butt Bubble
3. Fall Friend
4. Hip Bumper

The Absolute Worst

1. Body Bag (this one made everyone laugh but would be a terrible name for obvious reasons)

The Project Choice- Personal Anti Fracture Air Bag

So after some discussion and research on what things have and have not been done before. We decided to go with the Personal Anti Fracture Air Bag. The idea as shown in the sketch from our brainstorming session was to create an air bag belt that would deploy if a senior citizen suffered a fall. The belt would have gyro sensors that the detect angle of motion and speed and would only deploy if it decided the wearer was falling. Similar technology exists in cars and other applications but not for this type of protection for a person. We decided to move forward with this idea.