Welcome back to our website! Kickoff officially happened on Saturday, January 4th – and we’re already strategizing how to best tackle the board this year.
✨ Kickoff ✨
You might be asking yourself what kickoff even is.
Plenty of food (from Portsmouth Pizza Factory) and drink (three bottles of soda) were procured as we figured out the best to tackle this year’s challenge. While we can’t share our strategies online (our competitors may be looking at this blog at this very minute), know we have a plan.
Build
After maybe having too much fun with the 3D printer, we’ve fixed our big printer! We’ve got a lot of bigger parts we want to print, so having the ability to print them directly from our little lab is great.
We’ve also started on the robot arm, which will be used to pick up the coral and algae. We made it using rubber wheels and aluminum.
Programming
Programming is working on a new program for the arm that will allow for remote and autonomous operation. They are also working on installing and setting up new wifi cards for the radio. It was broken at first, but this will finally allow our robot to be controlled remotely.
Business
The business team is working on making our shirts for the competition, purchasing new stickers, organizing the Google Drive, and writing our monthly newsletter. Organizing the Google Drive is helping us by making it easier to find the resources and documentation that we need for robotics. Our newsletter is going to be the most detailed that we have written in a while.
Closing Notes
We have made a lot of progress this month. Kickoff finally showed us how to start designing the robot, which we found as a complex but doable challenge. The build team has started working on the robot arm and fixed one of the 3D printers. The programming team is working on the program for the arm and fixing the wifi system in the radio. The business team is working on making new stickers, making our newsletter, and organizing the Google Drive.
