Whew! Week one is done already! Can you believe it? This year's game is proving to be quite a challenge. Here are a few things we have accomplished this week:
-Basic strategy determined. We will be focusing on building a robot that can climb and deposit frisbees at the the top of the scoring pyramid, and that can then stay there until the end of the match, resulting in an extra 30 points. This strategy is very risky because if done correctly it will score us major points, but if it doesn't work, there is no other way for us to score, rendering our bot useless.
-Set up the electronics board. This year we're going with a plastic Lexan board rather than a plywood one. This makes the robot look more streamlined and sleek, and not as haphazard as in the past.
-CAD designs for the chassis. Our team CAD-er has almost completely CADed the basic chassis design. We're going with an unconventional design this year- no boxy rectangles for us!
-Programming progress. Our team programmer, Dan, has been training his apprentice, Josh and right now they are just working on testing connections and downloading the code onto the bridge. They're about to try connecting wirelessly.
-Shelves have been built. This year for competition we have two pit designers, Marquise and Addy. They have designed a fold-able shelf that has pegboard on the back so we can hang tools. The small shelf will display trophies and team pictures, and will have a TV set up running either video or picture slideshows. It's painted black and gold with paw prints- go lions!!
-Arm Design ideas. Though we have not begun prototyping yet, we have designs sketched up for claws that can lift the frisbees and clamp onto them. We also have begun designs for the climbing mechanism. More on that later.
We're working hard every day. Soon I'll write a post introducing all of our team members for this year. Peace out!
Captain Grace
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