Innovation Campus launches drone soccer program

Virginia Tech Innovation Campus is excited to launch the drone soccer program. This is the drone I built in the past four weeks. Our presenting sponsor is Boeing. And they're committed to introducing students to the world of aviation and careers. This is the drone soccer ball that we used to play drone soccer. We have middle school students from Francis Hammond Middle School in George Washington Middle School. They actually began the program in January, and they've been working to build their drone. Today we finished building the propellers and we added the lights. They put together their exoskeleton. And then we got into programming. So they had some experience with Beta Flight and copying the code. And then there was a lot of troubleshooting. The most challenging part was getting the drone to connect to the controller, because that required a lot of patience to both connect and also for the controller to actually turn on. So it marries STEM in rich ways where they learn about the science of flight, they engineering, they learn about problem solving skills. They even have some productive struggle components in there. It's just a rich way to marry complex topics. I'm most excited about playing my first ever drones soccer game and trying to get to Nationals We go to the competition on March 16th. We will host our regional competition for region four. Which includes Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Delaware, and DC. From that, there will be two teams that will advance to our national championship that will also be hosted here in the Northern Virginia area. You have this end goal, you're going to be in the arena teams playing this game, but you have to get there. So we have to build the drones step by step. Collaboration and teamwork, we're all working towards the goal, so the teamwork is important. The computer science, we're building on those skills. And the engineering design process, we're building on those skills. I'm in it more for the fun, not for the winning, but the winning will be good if we win. I'm actually really excited for this and for the great opportunity that I got from Virginia Tech Innovation Campus. And so I'm really happy.