2024 Season – Week 4

2024 Season – Week 4

Greetings from the Hitchhikers!
In Week 4, we started prototyping and testing a shooter and intake. Our first shooter design pretty much failed, so we redesigned it. We continue honing our CAD skills, electronics, build and test our design.

2024 Season – Week 3

2024 Season – Week 3

Greetings from the Hitchhikers! In Week 3, we were more than excited and happy to welcome Marie E. Hopper, the President of FIRST North Carolina. She talked to all the members about her history with mentoring and FIRST and talked to each member about why they joined, and what they like about FIRST. 
2024 Season – Week 2

2024 Season – Week 2

Greetings from the Hitchhikers! In Week 2, our team delved into the intricacies of designing a shooter and intake while mastering CAD & Electronics. Our shooter design focuses on achieving optimal velocity control, ensuring consistency in launching game elements, and integrating seamlessly with our overall game strategy. Simultaneously, our intake mechanism prioritizes versatility in object handling, quick retrieval and deployment, and adaptability to dynamic game changes. Complementing these hardware aspects, we explored how our team is honing its CAD skills, emphasizing precision in design and collaborative practices. Additionally, we delved into efficient electronics integration, covering topics like organized wiring, sensor integration, and creating a responsive and adaptable robot.

2024 Season – Week 1

2024 Season – Week 1

It’s the 1st week of the 2024 season, and the Hitchhikers are back in force. We held kickoff at a student’s house and immediately after learning the game, we split into 3 groups to learn about the game, and to present to the rest of the team our findings and any things we thought they should be aware of.

At the workshop, we started by developing a solid game strategy, figuring out what we needed to accomplish instead of going straight to trying to figure out how too accomplish it, and we felt all the more confident for it.

This week, we designed an intake and shooter prototype, and got a first draft of our robot created in CAD. Something we found helpful was watching a lot of Robot in 3 Days videos for inspiration on our design, and planning everything out, even just making a basic sketch, before starting development on a prototype.

We’ve already learned a lot and are excited to see how the season pans out. 

2023 Season – FIRST World Championships

2023 Season – FIRST World Championships

Hello from Houston!

The Hitchhikers made it the World Championships, but things didn’t go as expected. On the first day, Lunkwill arrived safe and sound, and the team got busy setting up the pit. At the end of the day, we decided to take the robot over to the fields for a test run, and that was when disaster struck. On his way to the grid to place a cone, Lunkwill glitched out, the arm rose to the 90 degree position and fully extended. When we got back to the pit, we were in shock: when the arm rose up, it had sheared off the box on the side that had the pulley motor and gearbox attached. We went back to the hotel, frantically planning how we would fix it the next morning. We managed to fix the arm, and later in the day, the same thing happened…TRAGEDY.