Hard at Work

     The build season is still heavily underway and now that we're on our fourth straight day of robotics during this long weekend, some of us are really feeling the pressure. The build team is still working away in the basement trying to assemble the robot and upstairs programming team is getting frustrated just trying to get our laptops to connect to the robot. Some members show their fatigue a little more than others, but almost all of us need to take a break once and a while.


  Even the dogs look like they could use a nice nap.


  Cheers,
   - Lincoln

Here Are A Few Pics And Vids

These are some pics and vids of our team and some of our progress.

We're Getting There

      Today we have made slow but steady progress on our robot and hope to be in possession of a working, testable robot by tomorrow's end. We have almost completed a Solidworks image of our robot for visual planning of our also almost-complete Archimedes Screw ball lift design. One team member has dubbed it the "Artesian Screw."
      Hopefully tomorrow we can finally test the engineering and programming that we've been waiting to test. We are determining what to do about Safety Man because he graduated. We are planning on appointing a new one but don't know who yet. We are also almost done building a trailer for testing. Tomorrow should be full of things being complete and, if we have time, testing. Things are slower than anticipated but we should be as close to done as reasonable by the time of our competitions in Manchester, NH and Seattle, Washington.

      -Sterling, Programming Team

FIRST Team Update

     Today we have been working on the prototype of our robot's collector mechanism for the competition

this year, Lunacy. We have had the challenge of trying to figure out how to collect somewhat yielding 9-inch diameter orbit balls. They look almost like the stereotypical atom diagram electron paths. We have to collect them off of a slippery surface without expanding beyond the original size of our robot. We then have to deploy them into trailers attatched to the opponents' robots (for complete rules and explaination please see usfirst.org). We are using a sticky roller to attach to the balls and deploy them into our containment chamber to later deploy to score.
     On the programming front we have been working on getting the camera to recognize the green and pink above the trailers and then distinguish between our trailers and opponents' trailers. We have made it recognize the colors and are currently waiting for the build team to be ready for us to test our latest programming for distinguishing the patterns.
     So far we are on schedule and hoping to have a working robot to test drive on the slippery field soon.

     -Sterling, Programming Team

First Blog Post!

     Yay, the Blog is officially up! Yet another milestone on our journey to a new website is now complete!

    Until next time,
      - Lincoln