Ramping Up Our Design

A creative person is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. 
-Ayn Rand

Check out our new YouTube video!
Prototype Robot: Feeding Frisbees and Shooting

We have received some really awesome emails from teams across the country complimenting our online presence and willingness to share. The entire team cannot begin to express how awesome those emails are. It absolutely continues to motive our team to achieve and share even more. FIRST Robotics is a truly awesome community. The idea of coopertition is ever present in the team's minds.

Our basic robot design is for the most part complete. We added the last details today. We can now have frisbees fed to us through the feeder slots. We accomplished this by adding a ramp on top of our shooter. It was a team effort to put the ramp on and get all the kinks out. We shot a ton of frisbees today making sure all aspects of our robot are completely in sync. We also changed the hopper design by adding tin instead of more bucket at the top. This allows more room for the frisbees to fall down into. Check out the new YouTube video above to see the full process in action.

We still need to add hooks to the robot to practice hanging.

We spent a lot of time today talking with Dan from Douglas Machine, our engineering mentor, about how we can pick up frisbees. The advantage we see in doing that is programming our autonomous to pick them up and shoot them. That would allow us to shoot 5, instead of 3, frisbees for double points. We are still in the very early stages of planning it, but we are confident we will complete the design. It involves a piston pulling the frisbees onto a conveyor belt. We will post a video in the coming days.

The business plan was revised by Bydlon and Renee Becker. We are loving the new additions and are constantly amazed by how much the team has accomplished in the past year.

Carson made a poster for each of our next big events. The Pizza Selling at the Ice Fishing Contest Poster is fantastic. The Open House poster is also very nice and informative.

Allen, as always, is making improvements to the server. We will be able to sign in and out like a punch card.

Dalton's dad came in again (because he's AWESOME) and helped square up the bottom of the pyramid. Next up is the middle level and finally the top... It's a project, that's for sure. And we appreciate all of his hard work so much.

Goals for tomorrow: Executive Summary changed, hooks installed, pick up a frisbee using fork and ramp, change up the robot cart, start battery cart ideas