By Terry Davis, Government Affairs Director
Comcast’s Terry Davis and Kim Cole, a Warehouse/Materials Supervisor based in our Auburn offices, recently visited Auburn’s Rainer Middle School to meet the Pink Panther FLL (First Lego League) Robotics Team. Comcast was invited to the school to review the team’s project presentation under the 2012 Senior Solutions Challenge.
The First Lego League program is a robotics challenge for 9-16 year old students designed to get young students excited about science and technology – and teach them valuable employment and life skills. The Pink Panthers are an all-female team of 6th- and 7th-graders working on this year’s Senior Solutions Challenge. For Part 1 of the challenge, the girls needed to identify and learn about a problem faced by senior citizens and work as a team to create a solution to the problem identified.
After working with a group of senior citizens at a nearby retirement community, the Pink Panthers decided to research and focus on solving the problem they said that some seniors face using the original TV remote control. The team’s presentation consisted of a PowerPoint and skit highlighting key findings from their senior citizen TV usage/remote control survey. They concluded some senior citizens are high-volume TV watchers and need a very simple remote control to help them navigate channels. From there, the girls designed a basic remote prototype with power, volume control, channel up/down, and a direct guide access button. Also, the girls felt a direct customer service focus should be developed for senior citizens to help educate them about new features like On-Demand and the Digital Video Recorders.
After completing the project presentation, the Pink Panthers demonstrated their progress on the robotic game portion of the challenge. Under this game, the girls designed and programmed a robotic rover to complete a required challenge course, using their engineering and math skills. It is truly amazing to see what these girls created to compete in their upcoming regional competition on Saturday, Dec. 8.
Note: Big thanks to Terry for writing this post, originally for our internal newsletter. In the category of “Great Minds Think Alike,” Comcast does equip our techs with a remote for people who might need something simpler, not just certain seniors; and many people also enjoy the simplicity of our new Xfinity apps on smartphones and tablets. Terry and Kim sure appreciated the girls’ rigorous analysis of the seniors’ needs and their creative solutions. We appreciate their ideas for tactful and appropriate ways to educate people about the simpler remotes.
