WELCOME BACK, EVERYONE!
Welcome back to the ausTIN CANs blog! Over the weekend, we celebrated kickoff, the annual event where this build season’s game is unveiled and the team are informed of what type of robot they must build over the next two months. It ended up being “Rapid React”, where alliances of three robots are pitted against each other in a hoop-shooting game with oversized tennis balls. As a result, the team ran to the meeting room in small groups to review the rules and start building mental images of how rounds will go.
For example, students broke off into 4 groups of around 10 and worked together with their mentors and their fellow students to review the newly released rules of the game, then reconvened to share what they found that others might have missed. After this, students were tested ruthlessly to confirm they knew what they could and could not do within the limitations of the game.
Afterwards, the team broke back up and headed to the foyer to grab some lunch donated by our very gracious chaperones who donated some eats to our ravenous team. We got time to chat, relax, and take a break before going back in to talk strategy.
At the end of the day, the robotics club gathered in the classroom to talk strategy about the upcoming games. First: we gathered the amounts of points given for each action so we could establish priorities for our robot during the autonomous section of each round. After that, we made a list of our robot’s mechanisms and decided on each one’s level of importance so we can confirm our bot will be fully functional come competition. Then, the team was released to go home and sleep on their ideas.
The next day, students returned to the lab and started to talk mechanics. We discussed the essentials needed to maintain a shooter, so we can toss the balls into the hub, and a climber, required for the endgame of each tournament where robots are suggested to climb across a monkey bars-like structure for more points to hopefully win the match. We also discussed other parts, such as the ball intake system and the mechanisms required to carry the ball up into the shooter.
Overall, kickoff was an educational and enjoyable event for all of the team, and we couldn’t be more happy with the turnout. See you next time on…
THE AUSTIN CANS!
