FIRST Robotics 2026 - Week Three Report

We are about half way through Build Season.  I think, and hope, we are half way done with the robot.  It's hard to tell.  Various components are being built in different parts of the shop.  Will they all play nicely together?

Pictures forthcoming.  Personally I've been doing things on the periphery.  I shot some video when the usual camera persons were not available.  It was of very mixed quality.  I wonder if my geriatric eyesight in the tiny little preview screen had anything to do with it.  Oh, and I helped kids with bumpers.  Bumper construction is the most tedious of tasks.  I had hoped to escape it this year.  But no.  I guess its penance for my grievous misdeeds involving Robots Past....

Here's the robot at end of Saturday session.  It drives, picks up the game pieces, moves them on the conveyor belt.  This set of bumpers is made of old scrap.  Sufficient for testing and each crew of new bumper craftsmen must make the same mistakes.  In recognition of the Hardship Assignment all students working on bumpers get a special ice cream ration.

We are already at the stage where multiple working groups are competing for access to the robot.  It takes a bit of stage managing to get tasks prioritized.

Here's the CAD drawing of what the robot will look like with the extendable hopper, indexer and shooter added on.

And a couple of short video clips showing respectively, the intake/conveyor system working....

And....what the shooter can do.  Note...this was with the cameras and software recognizing the target distance and height, and automatically spinning up to the correct rpms for this location!