FIRST Robotics 2018 - Power Up!

OK, we've had the Big Reveal.  This year the FIRST team will have to build something really tricky.  Well, that's true every year.  The YouTube video of the game animation:

As of this writing we are at the stage where the video is being watched again and again. The rules book is being studied. Questions, some silly and some profound are being asked.  Sometimes the silly ones lead to the most profound observations.

The overall sense is that we are pretty much building a highly automated Amazon warehouse!  Moving boxes all over the place.

FIRST tries to teach skills that relate to the real world and this should be a good dose of same.  One of my first emails after getting the details was to a company that had expressed interest in the team.  And they make multi axis fork lifts!  Help!

In our third year we are obviously way behind the curve of real veteran teams with respect to having an accumulated pool of designs, experience, spare parts.  But we have been a pretty active team to date, and a number of the things we have done in the past are relevant to this undertaking.  Sometimes it is the previous failed projects that have the most potential to be dusted off and revisited.

I expect that for the next couple of months it will be Robot Mondays, History Wednesdays and Pot Luck Fridays here at Detritus of Empire.  Subject of course to whatever unexpected turns up.