Feb 21, 2018
When you decide to make a few changes to the robot between League Championships and State Championships...
Well, we do have two more days.
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When you decide to make a few changes to the robot between League Championships and State Championships...
Well, we do have two more days.
Wow! We are still on cloud nine after being part of the Winning Alliance at the Illinois Northeast League Championship. This along with our recognition as 3rd Place for the Inspire Award and recognition as winner of the Connect Award puts us on a path to the IL State Championship on FEB 24th at Elgin Community College.
We spent today’s meeting debriefing the League Championship in preparation for State. Primary topics included: FIRST Ladies Meet Up (what went well and what can be improved); competition (the team was very satisfied with the competition but believe work needs to be done on our intake system and initial stages of our autonomous code in order to optimize scoring capabilities. Proposed new designs were initiated in CAD by the hardware team to address the identified shortcomings.
After a looooong Saturday day and night, we are approaching final design changes for the approaching League Championship. A little bit of reduced weight, a simplified lift and work to see how we can get horizontal is all starting to come together. Of course, there are a number of challenges along the way and we hope time stays on our side as days are ticking away.
Things are always dynamic with 7351, especially as we prepare for competitions. Tonight, the focus was on judging, final testing of our Dynamic AR augmented reality application and putting the final touches on POP.
We look forward to seeing everyone at League Championship at Highland Park High School on Sunday. Come out and cheer us on as we face off against the best robotics teams the community has to offer.
Well, The League Championship version of our robot is coming together. Lots of work to do but the results are expected to be worth the effort: added features, increased speed of scoring mechanisms and added reliability. One week until robot lockdown. Let the sprint continue . . .
The Stretch Run
Well, it’s time for the Illinois home stretch to the FIRST Tech Challenge season. To prepare, we focused today on a review of our season and season objectives to develop our judging outline. Each team member shared what they thought were key areas for discussion with judges and how we should go about presenting materials. More to come ...
The mechanical team continues its efforts on our next generation design as we consider pros and cons of implementation of two new scoring mechanisms and scoring element manipulators. For sure things are starting to move forward ;)
Leo focused on a program glitch observed at Meet III and is investigating. At the same time, progress is being made to stage software for future design mechanical analysis and testing. Lots to do in a short period of time.
Our AR application is progressing and we are almost there. This should help us share our tools with many more people than if we had to physically bring our robot to all discussions.
Finally, we debriefed on our FIRST Ladies activities this yaer which are numerous. With our observations of successes and continued program gaps, we laid out plans for how to help FIRST Ladies continue to move forward and create the best impact for all involved. Any professional women interested in supporting this effort, please reach out.
2 weeks to our ‘qualifier’ ...
Wow! What an impactful break for our outreach program. We fought hunger with FIRST Fights Hunger and bringing together the FIRST community. We put 120+ Girl Scouts through our FIRST Badge Workshop enabling them to be qualified to receive their three robotics badges. Not to mention during our workshop we held a food drive gathering over 500 items for our local food bank. Just wow!
Now, it is time to refocus and prepare for Meet III and beyond. Today we organized our plan for attendance and participation at Meet II along with our approach and drive strategies. Robot official changes have been minimal for competition (more on that later) so we know what we have in front of us.
Additionally, we started initial discussion on planning for the remainder of the month. Mechanical updates, software priorities and preparations for the league championship. Our mechanical team even continued work on post Meet III design concepts. Hmmm, what is that ...
Looking back we are proud. Looking forward we see a LOT to do. Now its time to roll up our sleeves and get back to work.
Looks like the build season has shifted gears into down and dirty . . .