Week 2 Build Day 10

So far this week the team has been working on refining design and the prototype for the "wing ramp". We decided to start again and change the prototype to support more weight. The design for the cube pickup was also improved so that we can pick up a cube sideways as well as straight on.

The build team worked on completing the chassis and finding the geometry of the "wing mechanism".
There was a group effort in deburing the metal of the chassis so that it wouldn't have any sharp edges causing injury.
The programming team has been working hard on the training bot and switching form arcade drive to tank drive.

Week 1 Build Day 7

It has been a great week! We have had a lot of support from our mentors and coaches. Today is Saturday. On Saturdays we meet from 9am-4pm. Everyone brings food for themed lunches. Today's theme was American Picnic, we had some fantastic contributions!

With Saturday's comes A LOT of work! The team voted and decided to go with an elevator style lifting system. Team members were split into work teams. We had a programming team, a prototype team, design team and build team.

The programming team has been busy installing software to improve the robot's designs. 
The prototype team began and completed making a prototype of the wing ramp.
The build team worked on the drive train and the chassis.

The design team has come up with the Power Cube Pick up Geometry. We are well on our way to building an award winning robot! 

Week 1 Build Day 5

The last couple of days the team has decided on the mechanisms that will work to reach our strategy goals. 
The team objective:

We are going to collect power cubes along with our alliance partners to earn the "Levitate Power Up" which gives an alliance a free climb. We will also work to gain control of the scale and the switches which will ultimately assist us and our alliance partners in winning the match. 

We plan on designing and building a wing lift that will assist our alliance partners is the climb end game.

Week 1 - Day 3

The last two meetings we continued to brainstorm and have come up with some good ideas (at least we think so). We have been discussing whether we would use an elevator, arm power lift or a scissor lift. We have been weighing the pros and cons of each concept. So far the team is working very well together sharing ideas.

Week 1 - Build Day 1

Today the team was busy with continued dissection of the game video; learning rules and thinking of the possibilities with our robot build. The team was very busy. We had members working on putting together the wheels for our chassis. We also had team members learning about C++ robotic programming. We rounded out our meeting with a lot of brainstorming. We are looking forward to a great build season!!  

FIRST POWER UP Kick off

FIRST POWER UP, is the FIRST Robotics Competition game for the 2018 season. It involves two alliances of three teams each, with each team controlling a robot and performing specific tasks on a field to score points. The game has a retro 8-bit theme and teams are required to place milk crates, or "power cubes", on large balancing scales to tip the scale and gain ownership. Alliances can also trade power cubes for power ups, giving them a temporary advantage in the game. At the end of the game, robots can climb the tower attached to the center balancing scale using a rung attached to the tower, giving them additional points.

Day 24 week 4

Wow! Only 2 weeks left! It's crazy how fast these weeks go by! We finalized our ball hopper design today. The parts will be cut and powder coated in our beautiful 931 green! The ball hopped was covered in a fiber glass coating this afternoon. It was messy but fun work! When the fiberglass is dry we will spray paint it black.