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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!

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Cowtown Throwdown Prep

Henry Braeske, writing to you the Tuesday Blog Update! (Also he just got author permissions so he's very excited about that.

Today at practice, we were making our lists and checking them twice, making sure that we had everything we needed for Cowtown, and when it comes time to pack up, we will be able to be confident we didn't forget anything (knock on wood... or maybe 80/20).

We started off the meeting with some last minute wiring touch ups, then it was off to driver practice for the rest of the meeting. We set up plans for the backup drivers and human players, making sure to thwart muphy's law at every opportunity.

A last minute autonomous mode was decided Against, as the risks were greater than the rewards.

We encountered a slight hiccup in our plans when 2 team members, out of curiousity, launched a basketball from the bowl of our catapult, and managed to break the bowl. We will be able to procure a new bowl before competition, but needless to say this put a kink in our plans. The name of the two responsible are undisclosed, but rest assured, they were freshmen.

Signing off, ill bring you more from cowtown, as it happens.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Hello World!

Henry here, with the first blog post since February.

We are currently counting down to the Cowtown Throwdown, an off-season event in Kansas City. Christine and Matthew are busting their butts getting the robot in shape, replacing the pneumatic cylinder, restringing the surgical tubing and just tidying up in general. As of this moment, they are in a teleconference with our team captain, Walter Deitzer to resolve some technical issues. Good Luck to them.

The freshman team, led by Clayton Miller, are learning the ropes by building themselves a robot built to compete in Ultimate Ascent. They are currently in the brainstorming and prototyping stage, pitching ideas in a circle around a blank chassis. They have until the week before Thanksgiving to finish the robot. They already have a chassis and a number of ideas, so good luck to them as well.

I hear that soon we will be ordering team hoodies, in order to put on a united front at competitions and to represent around UCity, so stay tuned for that.

We have had good attendance today, and in previous weeks, and today, there was even a Christine sighting! Things are on the up and up.

Thats all for today, im afraid. Next week, i will bring you more updates.

Signing off,
Henry Braeske

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Parts!

This is Captain Walter with the latest updates on the build.

As of today we got the parts, that we sent to Ranken Technical Institute to get welded, back.  These parts include the structure for the catapult we are building, and the front tensioner. They look very good, so, instead of trying to describe their magnificence, I will just post some pictures. 






And there it is. thank you for reading, mmore updates should follow as the season progresses.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

We are more efficient than ever! I (Marquise Williams, one of this years team captains) have never in the 3 yrs I have been here seen such progress in this short amount of time. We have a completed chassis, at least two complete functioning prototypes and a very well organized team comprised of new and old members with a wide variety of talents. You will be hearing from us more often this year and I am proud to be a captain of the 2014 UCHS Robolions, team 3397.

                 
                                                                                                                                                                     The robotics  team at kick off on Saturday the 4th! Go robotics!