We are in the midst of our final week of build season, as it ends on Tuesday, February 19th. Through its ups and downs, we have had one of the most eventful build seasons. We are coming out feeling that, in the end, we will have a unique Chairman’s essay and robot to compete with at upcoming competitions.

Mechanical

Several stages are in progress this week as we race to complete the robot. Our drive train for the bot has been completed and set up. The electronics board, which acts as the main control system for the robot, has been assembled and attached. Next, we mounted the ball basket to the lift, after receiving the ball from the ramp, and shoots it. Our lift now works, it is connected by three different pieces of maytec that extend off of each other.

Additionally, we have a hatch panel grabber that is connected to the ball basket and is working, it grabs the panels from the the human player station and distributes them to the rocket ships or cargo ship. Also, we’ve started building the ramp, which will be used to transfer the ball from the floor to the ball basket. Lastly, we installed the “belly pan” into the bottom of our robot to better keep everything contained and secure inside the bot.

The following images are diagrams to explain the different parts of our robot.

1. Ball basket and shooter.
2. Ramp that picks the balls up from the floor and carries it to the ball basket.
3. A nut and bolt bowl used to hold parts while working on the robot.
4. Hatch panel grabber. We will be able to use this to obtain the panels from the human player station and disperse them into the various slots that are located on the 5. rocket ships or the cargo ship.
5. “Belly pan.” It is what contains the main wiring and keeps it from falling out.
6. Two of our robot’s batteries, they each weigh 12.5 pounds and are the main source of power to our robot.
7. Drivetrain: where the wheels are located. At the time this photo was taken, we had to dissemble the wheels from it to make some adjustments.

Awards

Since we have submitted our Chairman’s essay to FIRST, the awards committee members have been working hard on our Chairman’s speech to present at competition. We have chosen three student members to present the speech in front of a panel of judges at competitions.

Our District Competitions

These competitions we are definitely attending:

1. NE District Waterbury Event, March 9-10, at the Wilby High School in Waterbury, CT, USA
2. NE District Western Event, March 23-24, at the Western NE University – Alumni Healthful Living Center, 1215 Wilbraham Road Springfield, MA 01119 United States

See more info about our performance on the Robot Profiel