Thrown Down

As you may have learned from the previous post, the RoboLions attended the Cow Town Throw Down in Kansas City last weekend.

The competition was difficult. Some of the best teams in the Midwest were present, with robots that could rival those of NASA's level (minus the million-dollar budget). Our team wasn't exactly as prepared as we could have been (we were making major changes to the robot the day before competition- and did not test those changes.) Needless to say, we ran into a lot of issues during competition, and had to repair our robot multiple times. We finished 42 out of 45 teams, However, we did win our last match, which was exciting- ending the competition on a positive note.

All of the challenges we ran into definitely taught us some lessons about what it means to be prepared. We also learned more about the importance of team dynamics, and communication. But we enjoyed the competition nonetheless, especially cheering on our friends teams 1985 (the RoboHawks) and 1094 (The Channel Cats) as they went through the finals. 1094's alliance ultimately won, beating out reigning champ team 16 (Bomb Squad).

Enjoy these pictures from the competition, they will soon be up on the Facebook page!

Kansas City, FTC and other updates

Next weekend, the Robolions will be competing in the Cow Town Throw Down, an offseason event in Kansas City! So these past few weeks we have been working diligently to get Thor up and running. So far, we've reworked the shooter, which we're still not sure will work as well as we would like it to. Our old motors weren't giving us the torque we needed, so we had to reconfigure the programming to comply with the new motors. Right now, we're just getting everything set finally. Good thing this is just a fun event, because Thor will most likely not be in top condition!

The FTC team has been making progress on their robot. They have finally gotten a chassis put together, as well as begun to configure the wiring. They're learning how the electronics of a robot work, and a few have begun to work with Dan on programming using LabView. Hopefully they'll be able to get everything working by December 8th, the date of their first competition.

In other news, the Robolions are running the concessions stand at the local FLL Qualifier next weekend, the 10th and 11th. The event is free to the public, so everyone is invited to Brittany Woods Middle School to watch the tournament!

Peace out,

RoboLions
Team 3397