DONUTS! DONUTS! LET'S ALL GO NUTS!!!! Are you a cake donut person? Cream filled donuts? Jelly filled donuts? Chocolate donuts? Cinnamon rolls? Or do you just like glazed donuts the best? Whichever is to your liking, team 931 would like to report that we just had some!

The day kicks off, after we've had our filling of donuts, with some deciding on just what we shall do for our robot!

The first major decision was what kind of holder mechanism we want. The choices; a vacuum and a roller.

To prototype the vacuum, we gutted two household vacuums and put on a CIM motor to control it. When we tried, we found that a CIM motor wasn't nearly as powerful as the vacuum's original motor. To make up the speed lost by the CIM motor, we tried to up the ratio, and it did increase the suction and it could easily hold a ball. Even with the ability to hold the ball, it required an immense amount of precision to actually center the ball to hold it.

With the roller, I'd first like to go into where we got our inspiration for this idea. I'd like to give credit to team 1726 the NERDS and this video they put onto youtube. We'd like to continue on with this idea except extend on it and make it legal. We also plan to make the rollers so that it automatically centers the ball to our kicker. Want to see how this works? Come to the St. Louis Regional at Chaifetz Arena, March 18th-20th. Or, if you live closer to Kansas, come to the Kansas regional on March 3rd-6th. If you can't make it to either of these, I'm sure we'll defend our title as champions at Kansas, at the very least, so come to Atlanta to see us compete!

After our disposing of the vacuum idea, a few students and a mentor went to prototype... some more vacuum ideas. At least they're determined! It seems like they're making progress and it actually looks nice! During this display of determination, the other group working on the rollers begin designing the new mechanism and creating it. They seem to be having a great deal of fun! But that doesn't mean much, we always have fun in robotics.

Programming has been going on under the radar. They haven't told anyone what they're doing, and they are nose deep in that tiny little computer they have been given. Now I know why most of the programmers I've known have had very thick glasses! The task they have assigned themselves is playing with accelerometers!

As I am typing now, we have feasted quite ferociously on some incredible Italian food, courtesy of many of our team's mothers and students. Che era delizioso!

~Chi