Time flies fast when you’re working hard! We are quickly nearing the halfway point for this season and we’ve made a lot of progress. We’ve finished our design phase and our robot parts have started to arrive, allowing us to move towards a finished robot.
The integration team brought together the input and output ideas and got to work on prototyping the mechanisms. Our output will feature a turret shooter, which we worked on refining during our prototyping. We then made a list of required materials and parts. We’ve already received some orders! Along the way, we’ve (not unexpectedly) developed some healthy debate skills.
The CAD work done by our students this year has been super useful in determining how to properly integrate robot parts. We have also been working on making the design for the bumpers so that we know exactly what layout to use for the robot. Simon, the CAD lead, has started training younger students and he is planning on starting an interactive summer course to teach more people who are interested in CAD.
In the field construction subgroup, we worked on replicating the hangar, this game’s climb element. By the end of the week, we finished a working hangar model for future tests of climb ability. Now, we are working on finishing the hub, an 8-foot tall funnel the robot needs to launch balls into. We hope to test the shooter mechanism next week using these structures.
In our hang design group, we have been building telescoping arms and are trying to figure out how we can best integrate them. With the arrival of our new parts, we’ve been able to begin building the hang mechanism.
A small group of us have started reviewing and updating last year’s vision code. We worked on calibrating the cameras, hoping to have a much more accurate system this year. We want to make sure the robot can properly detect vision tape– reflective tape that helps the robot aim for the upper hub.
Another exciting advancement of the last two weeks is our finished website! After many weeks of work, our team’s web development manager, Soren, has finished updating the team website. Now it has updated information about this season’s team, sponsor information, photos, and more. Check it out at team6962.com!
We also made a lot of progress in the marketing and business group. We’ve been hard at work fundraising by reaching out to both companies and the RobotX community for donations and sponsorships. We also launched a challenge for the team members to raise $250 each. This way, our whole community can learn business and marketing skills and apply them outside of robotics. The marketing team also provided a fundraising toolkit with resources and a leaderboard with prizes to encourage participation. If you are a RobotX member, we strongly encourage you to undertake this challenge, and if you are related to a member, we encourage you to connect them with those who may be willing to donate!
Our build season is off to a great start, and as a certain Disney character loves to say, our goals are nothing short of: [to infinity and beyond!]