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Hello, Robolions team members, mentors, friends, and community members! Welcome to "The Fourth Law of Robotics," home to University City High School's FIRST (For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Team. We hope to use this blog to inform you about what we're up to.
We compete in the FRC (First Robotics Competition), an annual competition where we have six weeks to build a robot from scratch. This year's game is Recycle Rush. We'll post updates here to let you all know what we're up to with building (and competing with) our robot!
We also are now competing in FTC (First Tech Challenge), the next level down from FRC. The game was called Ring It Up!

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Summer Session Success

Today was the team's second summer meeting, and plenty of progress was made. In construction, headway was made on the mecanum drive system, and parts for it were ordered.
In the category of programming, I made advances in building a recording function. When it's done, it should allow our team to record our drivers moving the robot, and then play it back autonomously. This system could prove helpful for building a better autonomous mode next season. So far, it partially works. When it really gets going, I'll post a video in this space.

- Daniel

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

To Our Readers

Hey! If you are a blog reader who is a teacher, interested parent, or the coach of an FLL or FTC team, and you're located in the area, we would love to come and demonstrate our robot for your group! We would show our robot's capabilities, explain the mechanics and engineering behind it, and teach the kids about what it's like to be part of a higher-level robotics team. It's a great, fun way to get kids interested in engineering, science and technology, as well as get them interested in a program that will teach them life-long skills.

If you are interested in a demonstration, please contact us at robolions3397@gmail.com. We can work out dates and times. Thanks!!

Summer Session #1

Today is our first summer build session. We have, as of today, 3 new members- Henry, Benjamin and Matt. It's good news for our team- Benjamin is interested in programming, which means that we have someone to take over Dan's spot when he graduates year after next. And of course, we always need more people to help build the robot.

Right now we are working on reattaching the CRio module. As you guys know, we had some complications with it at the competition, and ended up having to get a new one during the competition. National Instruments fixed our original CRio and now we are just working on putting it back on Quorra. That's our main objective for the day; that and getting our new members acclimated to the awesomeness of robotics!

Some other objectives for the coming weeks are getting the mechanum wheel system up and running so that we can use them for next season. We also want to do some more fundraising, hopefully selling more lightbulbs. We also plan to attend events and showcase our robot, to gain publicity. Now that we've got trophies, we are a regional Champion team, and have had our team written about in the Post-Dispatch, we feel like we should start doing more locally. Showcasing at Science Nights at the local elementary schools, showcasing at Club Fairs, anything we can do. The robotics program is growing in UCity, and we want to do all we can to help it!

So, this was just a quick update to let you know what we're up to. There will be more throughout the summer. Make sure to find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

Peace, love and robots!