Robotics Update - One Month to go....

The chaos of build and competition season is only a month and change away.  The preseason has had a lot going on.  Here's a few highlights.

Team members present to the School Board.  Their attention was in part held by the spectacle of the middle school robot with its pneumatic catapult being aimed directly at one of the Board members.  To be fair, he is an old friend...

The team did a stellar job.  Many questions followed including a surprising and unprecedented number that involved goats (our team mascot btw).

Build has been working on multiple projects.  One intriguing example is this:

This is a swerve drive base similar in some respects to last year's competition machine.  But there are two differences.  The wheels are entirely 3D printed.  And the electronics are mounted upside down on the bottom of the main deck.  They are - hopefully - protected by that black under shield.  This would allow for a cleaner base on which to mount, well, whatever the actual non drive mechanisms turn out to be.  It has not been operational yet.

Ah, and software.  Its always so hard to document what they do with their ones and zeros.  Here's one of our smarter kids hard at work.  What he has worked out is a program that allows the robot's vision tracking system to basically identify any combination of shape and color, isolate that image.....and put a targeting mark in the center of it.  Sure, what could possibly go wrong with this technology.

Then I remembered that last season he, for no discernable reason, started wearing dark sunglasses all the time.  And....did I detect a slight Austrian accent.........?