Hello again! We’re back to running at full steam, with prototypes from the build team, motor tests from the programming team, and some outreach updates from the business team.
First off, the Build Team has finalized the design for the ball launcher. Similar to our design from two years ago, this year’s robot will use a flywheel to propel the cargo balls into the target. However, since we’re aiming to hit a much more difficult shot than last year, the system is going to have to be considerably more complex. To this end, we’ve designed a launcher that will (fingers crossed) be able to both pick up a cargo ball off the ground and fire it into the hub without any human interaction necessary. This will dramatically increase our robot’s efficiency, and free up our drive team to focus entirely on piloting. Aside from that, this design will literally aim higher than any other previous Wire Clippers design, aiming for a target standing at more than double its standing height. We’re still working on a prototype or the climbing/traversal system, but for now, we’re planning to use two arms to pull the robot onto the first rung of the monkey bars, then move it up to the third and eventually the fourth bar. These goals are among the most ambitious we’ve ever had, but if all goes well our robot should be more than a match for even the toughest competition at regionals.
The prototype launcher. When attached to the robot, we plan to attach it to a mobile arm, to give it some measure of maneuverability 
The electronics rig, complete with the central processing unit. The programming team will be spending their time testing with this until the robot is ready to go Build team member Liam Bennet, presenting a prototype mount for the flywheel motor. We should be able to begin testing with it soon!
The Programming Team spent the meeting setting up the electronics rig for the robot, and streamlining our code by testing it with the motors. The current focus lies on cleaning up errors and maintaining as efficient a system as possible, while still allowing us to have some flexibility in how we run a relatively complex design like this year’s flywheel launcher. Getting this consistency early on is going to be critical, since it will give us more ability to adapt the code should the robot’s hardware need to change.
The Business Team has continued working to coordinate STEM presentations with the middle school (and possibly also the elementary ones – more on that in the future), and has made considerable progress with the award submissions. We’ve begun to make serious headway on award submissions, particularly the digital animation award, which we admittedly had to scramble a bit to get on track with, and fully expect to have the work for them done well before the official FIRST deadlines.
I won’t lie to you, this competition is going to ask a lot of us. We’re just coming off of a year of near inactivity, and a lot of our designs this year are well beyond the scope of anything we’ve ever done before. To say that this will be a challenge would be putting it lightly. But where we are now, competing against dozens of other teams, many of them with over a decade of experience, we’re not going to get anywhere if we aren’t ready to take risks. It won’t be simple, and it won’t be easy, but if we can maintain this pace, we have every expectation that it will be worth it.
Anyway, that’s just about everything for today. Now that we have prototypes to show you, we expect we’ll be posting a lot more going forward (our coach’s cat is sick, so this week might not see as much action, but after that), and we hope to see you soon. Stay tuned!
