New Ventures! 12/5/22

Good Afternoon, and Welcome back! Today is Monday, December 5th, and we are starting off the month in jolly spirits! Today was the team photo, however, we do not have the photo to show you currently, but we will put it on the website or the blog post as soon as possible. We would like to thank the volunteer mentor Don Delisle, a nuclear tooling engineer, for coming today and allowing us to meet. Don Delisle was very helpful with the build team teaching them about the new program and helping them learn it.

The Programming team had an exciting development with the arrival of our very own Limelight Sensor. Limelights are cameras that shoot lights out and utilize the reflections of light to determine the distance between the robot and different surfaces. Today we worked on integrating it into our existing programming, and doing some early tests. We also worked on the Mecanum, the movement system, and the PID, which is a sensor-based control system. These systems will allow us to automate the robot’s controls, giving us much greater precision in competitions.

The Build Team was very productive today, despite a heavy workload. In addition to organizing the team photo, the Build Team also worked on practicing a new 3D modeling software called On Shape. The program will allow us to make 3d models of our designs, but also can be used for 3d printing (as those of you who were here last year know, that came very much in handy). The team progressed from doing something as simple as a box to as sophisticated as an entire robot.

The Business Team worked on painting the chariots, and has also been workshopping a design for a new logo, a variation on the old Dragon design. We also worked on updating the finances with all of the materials for the chariots. At the end of the session, the business team began to paint the chariot in preparation for race day.

Thanks for reading the blog! Hope you had a great Monday! See you next week!