New to FIRST?

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, December 14, 2011

Doom Day

The rookie team presented Aragog (in all its slightly incomplete glory) to the varsity team today, was evaluated on knowledege of mechanics, electronics, and other important things... and survived!
Additionally, we've started considering which sub-team each individual rookie will be joining. For some of us, the choice was easy -- Henry's been a programmer through and through for a while now, and several of our members like working with their hands over anything else. For others, anything looked good. As the season goes on, though, they'll find a place. We can be sure of it.
Now the question is: what do we do with the two build sessions we have left until kick-off? The most popular option seems to be completing Aragog as a full team, so I suppose that's what will occupy our time next week. Until then, congrats to all around, and here's looking to a bright and gleaming future for the Robolions!

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Here's An Idea...

2012 is still the better part of a month away, but here's a good New Year's Resolution for the Robolions team: Become thoroughly acquainted with the rules of the game BEFORE beginning work on the robot.

That is all.

New Camera!!

We got our new camera today! Here are just a few pictures to update our adoring fans on our progress:

 James and Crystal, working on the Rookie Team's robot
 Daniel, working on the Classmate PC
Henry and Walter working on the computer

We just had to have some fun with the camera. It's pretty nice :)

In other news, tonight was a very successful parent's meeting! I feel like the parents now understand the method behind our madness a little more now. They know why their kids spend hours holed up in a robotics lab in the school basement. They all seemed to be pretty okay with that.

That's all for now!!
Captain Grace

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Work Continues

As Doom Day draws ever nearer and Aragog takes shape, it is up to one lone figure to create a script by which our noble team might prove itself worthy to its superiors and thus evade catastrophic destruction. That figure... is me.
Well, in all seriousness, I've started work on the PowerPoint presentation that we rookies will use on "Doom Day" to present Aragog. All of us are required to help present in some way, to show that they actually did something and didn't stand around guzzling our food the whole time. I know none of us have, but we all still have to help present.
The presentation is coming along smoothly, although it's fairly desultory and humorous, in rather the style of my first few sentences. I'm not sure if that'll fly on Doom Day, but it's best to at least get it out of my system before I start writing what we'll seriously use.