Blog

2024 Season – Week 11

Greetings from the Hitchhikers! In Week 11, we are busy finishing the updates to "Max", increasing the speed of collecting, shooting and climbing. We have a few 3 note autos programmed now,

Orange County District Competition

Title: The Hitchhikers Robotics Team Takes Orange County by Storm! Hey everyone! If you've been following the journey of The Hitchhikers robotics team, you know that we're always up for a challenge and a good time. Well, let me tell you about our recent adventure at...

2024 Season – Week 7

Greetings from the Hitchhikers!In Week 7, we finished building "Max" and continue programming and testing. We had tryouts for the drivers and drive team. 

2024 Season – Week 5

Greetings from the Hitchhikers!In Week 5, we continue prototyping and testing the 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 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

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,...

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,...

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...

2023 Season – NC District Championship

We had a lot of fun at the state championship. We were chosen in the 5th alliance, with Team 900, The Zebracorns, and Team 5518, Technowolves. Sadly, we got eliminated in Round 2 after a robot had a CAN error. We lost by 8 points after another robot hit us and we...
2023 Season – Week 4

2023 Season – Week 4

Assembly of the robot is proceedingWeek 4 is finished. We're working on version 5 of our gripper claw, and playing with different gearing and dimensions of the telescoping arm. And we are starting to build the actual robot. And, our website is running better. 

2023 Season – Week 3

2023 Season – Week 3

A few members work on the latest gripper version.Week 3 is finished. We're working on version 4 of our gripper claw, and playing with different gearing and dimensions of the telescoping arm. that the gripper will get mounted on. And, our website is running better. 

2023 Season – Week 2

2023 Season – Week 2

Two members work on the gripper.Week 2 is finished. We're working on autonomous driving, the gripper claw (to grab cones and cubes), and the telescoping arm that the gripper will get mounted on. But most importantly, we're working on getting the website running. 

2022 Science Museum in Raleigh

2022 Science Museum in Raleigh

After a fun and exciting season, we were more than happy to spend a day showcasing our robots at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. It was a fun day showing kids and parents our robots, and letting the kids drive the robots around and shoot balls.

2022 NC State Championship

2022 NC State Championship

After two competitions where we struggled with robot issues, we were excited to get a chance to go to the 2022 state finals! Finally, it was time for the competition to start! On the day of load-in, we were ready for the competition and in high spirits, but we were...

2022 FNC District ECU Event

2022 FNC District ECU Event

Its the teams first competition in a year and a half. We are so excited to compete again with a working robot. We ended up loosing in the semifinals, but we won the Gracious Professionalism award.

2019 NC State Championship

2019 NC State Championship

After our two back-to-back competitions, we were excited to get a chance to relax and catch up on life and some good tea! Our break was quite restful, but we knew that preparation for States had to begin soon. A few days after the end of Guilford, we met to unpack...

2019 Guilford County District Event

2019 Guilford County District Event

During the week leading up to our next competition at the Guilford County District Event, our main goal was to improve our ball collector. Cargo scored more points, so we decided not to focus on scoring hatches. At the previous competition, we noticed that Deep...

2019 Wake County District Event

2019 Wake County District Event

After bagging and tagging our 2019 robot, Deep Thought, we took a few days to catch up on some sleep and school. However, we knew that our break could not be long due to our mechanical falling behind schedule quite a bit. With that in mind, we set out to improve the...

2019 Build Season: Week 6

2019 Build Season: Week 6

Week 6 was spent getting everything ready before for the end of build season. During this week, our main goals were to finish all mechanical aspects, which needed quite a bit of work, and spend time calibrating our code. While we were able to learn from last year’s...

2019 Build Season: Week 5

2019 Build Season: Week 5

One of our main focuses of Week 5 was to finish fabricating our lift mechanism. Mechanically, we were able to accomplish that goal and more! Our endgame mechanism is mostly finished and mounted to our 2019 robot, and our collector for the hatches and cargo was worked...

2019 Build Season: Week 4

2019 Build Season: Week 4

During Week 4, our Mechanical Team finished attaching our lifting mechanism and the battery holder to our chassis and have begun to build a few things for the mechanism we are using for manipulating the cargo and hatches. On our Programming Team, they worked on...

2019 Build Season: Week 3

2019 Build Season: Week 3

Week 3 was full of building and testing stuff! It started off with a bang by drinking some tea and driving our completed chassis around, and for the rest of the week, our Mechanical Team focused on building the mechanism to get the balls and hatches into the rockets...