Leadership Parenting

*4/13/25*

*Own Personal Best and/or First Place*

Yesterday, at the Raytheon Autonomous Vehicle Competition, over 150 of the brightest engineering students from universities throughout the South showed off their skills. Universities from as far as Alabama, and El Paso were represented. Our 20 yr old Nitai's exceptional skills led his team to a major win, representing UTD.

The task was to build a drone that could find a "wounded soldier", and communicate to another vehicle that would drop medical supplies. All autonomous (press a button and they go). The first drone had to scan a football sized stadium for their wounded victim (a QR code). It had to communicate that location to the second vehicle, which would arrive and drop the medical kit. They were being judged on many things: speed, accuracy, and design. They had points for team spirit, reaching out to a STEM school project, documentation and more.

Every week for the past six months, this work has been our "dinner table conversation" . Nitai calls us on the way home and we discuss our new "children" (the drone and ground Rover they were building). "How's the drone doing? How's your progress? What do you need?" He is also juggling a full load of senior year classes, with a few master's level classes. His plate has been packed -- and all three of us (his dad, his brother and I) all in with him.

A week ago Nitai was confident.."We're going to win." He wasn't stressed. He has been systematically preparing for this. He's been working with drones since he was 12. His skill has always been finding his personal best through iteration: fixing, communicating with teammates, being frustrated, being elated, fixing and tweaking some more.

Yesterday, at the competition they had three challenges. For the second challenge, the team had 45 minutes on the field to do a few runs. They kicked into gear. They ran the process. Talked to each other, tweaked a few things, and ran it again. And again. As many times as they could until they were confident - this is our best.

(Rest in comments.)

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