by The Hitchhikers | Mar 25, 2017 | Competitions
Our first event was a huge learning experience and helped us to develop a clearer, more focused game strategy. At the first event, we learned that shooting was not the way to go for us. As a result, we took off our shooter and ball collector. We also realized that while our gear collector was good, we could make it better and faster for our next events. In the few days leading up to the Greensboro District Event, we decided to make a second gear collector that could pick up gears off the floor and was automated. This, we discovered, would make our cycle time faster and ensure that the gear was placed on the airship more securely.
On Friday, we again started off a little rough due to having a new gear collector and being unable to make it to a practice round for more practice with it. After a few rounds, however, it was pretty obvious that our new gear collector was working well. It was common to score three to four gears in a match. Once again, we showed that we could climb and do gears well. At the end of the day, we were ranked in 8th place.
On Saturday, our team continued to improve and climb in the rankings. Our final ranking was 6th place overall in the competition. During alliance selections, the fourth highest ranking team chose us as their first pick. Our alliance ended up consisting of Team 900, The Zebracorns; Team 3331, Tarheel Robots; and Team 2059, The Hitchhikers. Though our alliance did not advance beyond quarterfinals, again the result of our alliance having some tech problems, we had a great time and continued to learn valuable lessons! It also helped that we were awarded the Gracious Professionalism Award again!!
by The Hitchhikers | Mar 25, 2017 | Competitions
After bag & tag, we had about a week to prepare for our first competition, the Pitt County District Event. Over that week, we met on several days to continue fine tuning Slartibartfast, make buttons, start packing, and do anything else that needed to be done before competition.
On Saturday, we started off a little rough as our drive team was still getting used to the game and driving our robot, Slartibartfast. We had shown that we could do gears, but had not shown that we could climb. As the morning progressed, we got better and better. We showed that we had a consistent, fast climb and could deliver two to three gears in a match, which was very important in this game. At the end of the day, we were ranked in 2nd place.
The following day, we continued to improve and stayed steady in the rankings. Our final ranking was 2nd place overall in the competition. By the end of alliance selections, we had Team 4561, TerrorBytes, and Team 5607, Team Firewall as our alliance partners. While our alliance did not make it beyond quarterfinals, the result of our alliance having some tech problems, we had a blast and learned a lot! We also ended up getting the Gracious Professionalism Award for the sixth time!!
by The Hitchhikers | Mar 23, 2017 | Off Season
A couple of weeks before Christmas, we participated in the Cary Christmas Parade for our third time, allowing us to showcase our robots and introduce our team to our community. To get ready for the parade, we all pitched in to decorate our robots and float with a ton of orange, blue, and holiday cheer.
During the parade, we had Ford, Benjy, and Trillian shooting balls and frisbees. While some of our students stayed on the float to control the robots, others walked the course, catching the flying objects from the robots and handing out candy. As with previous years, having our robots launch frisbees and balls through the air never ceased to amaze the thousands of kids and parents.
Overall, the team had a blast, and a lot of people told us that they were super impressed with our demonstration! This year’s Cary Christmas Parade was another enjoyable experience, and we had a ton of fun supporting and spreading FIRST and sharing our enthusiasm for STEM!
by The Hitchhikers | Mar 23, 2017 | Build season
After much excitement, this year’s FIRST Robotics Competition game, STEAMworks, has finally been revealed. STEAMworks is a game where two alliances composed of three robots work to use steam power to prepare their respective airships for takeoff. This is accomplished by shooting balls (fuel) into the goal (the boiler), delivering gears to the pilot, and climbing at the end of the teleop period (preparing for takeoff).
Due to the ice, we were not able to meet in person for the first five days of build season. However, we did not let this time go to waste. We met online to brainstorm strategies and figure out how we were going to play this game, how our robot was going to complete the tasks we wanted it to, and how we were going to fit everything together on the robot while staying within the size limits. We all decided to build a fast robot with the capability to shoot fuel, deliver gears, and climb. At the end of week one, we had a basic design and were fine tuning it in CAD (Computer Aided Design) while prototyping some of the ideas we came up with.
During the second and third week, we continued prototyping our ideas and started to work on building our shooter and ball collector. For a long time, we debated over having a low goal shooter or a high goal shooter. We eventually decided on a high goal shooter as it was worth more than the low goal. We also worked on our gear collector design. For our gear collector, we decided to make it automated to allow for faster gear cycles. Apart from working on the robot, our team also started working on the marketing and business-related items, such as writing the Chairman’s essay and drawing t-shirt designs.
At the beginning of week four, we finished building our ball collector and shooter. For the rest of the week, tested our shooter and ball collector, tweaking and changing some things. We also continued to work on our gear collector. The business side of things also accomplished much during this week. They finished writing our Chairman’s essay submission and successfully submitted it by the deadline while continuing to work on our video, button designs, and a t-shirt design drawn in illustrator.
During week five and six, we finished our gear collector, changing it from one that had more moving parts to one that was essentially a plastic pocket. We also had drive team tryouts, powder coated our robot, and named our robot Slartibartfast during these weeks. While our build team was working on finishing building the robot, our marketing team was working on putting the final touches on the t-shirt design and began the process of ordering them. Finally, it was time to get Slartibartfast ready for bag & tag. We are beyond excited for our competitions and cannot wait to play with our fellow North Carolina teams and, hopefully, out-of-state teams!
by The Hitchhikers | Feb 27, 2016 | Build season
This last week of build season, our team continued to fabricate parts for the chassis. Fortunately, it only took us a few days to make all the pieces and we were able to start assembling everything together. While we were putting everything together on for the second chassis, we started taking apart our first chassis so we could start painting it. We got the parts painted and were then able to quickly put them back together at the end of the week.
One we assembled everything together again, we took our robot, Ford, out for testing. We practiced crossing a couple of defenses and shooting the boulder into the high goal. Once we were able to figure out a few values for aiming, we took Ford back to our shop and started to take him apart and get ready for bag & tag.
by The Hitchhikers | Feb 27, 2016 | Build season
This week, our team accomplished a lot to get the robot driving and the arm to aim for the high goal. We we were also able to get our shooter rollers working. Towards the end of the week, we started to work on building a second robot chassis to give ourselves something to practice with for the weeks in between bag and tag day and our first competition.
While our build team was working on finishing building the robot, our marketing team was working on putting the final touches to the t-shirt design.
Towards the end of the week, despite our busy schedule, we were still able to make it to Apex Elementary annual “Science Spectacular” event. Presenting to each grade level throughout the day, we were able to introduce hundreds of students to FIRST and the importance of STEM.
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