From the Blog
SPARK Day
I had no idea time really could fly as fast as it is during this year’s build. As quickly as it arrived, Week Two of the build season is now in the books and Week Three is upon us. It’s a short week as most of us have semester finals. But, we have made significant progress towards building our new robot, Zephyr. The Build Team made a prototype of a shooting mechanism for launching the balls, and mounted it on our mecanum robot. They also worked on a ball collecting mechanism, which acts similar to a street-sweeper. The CAD Team helped with dimensions and the designs of the components the Build Team created.
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Upcoming Events
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Friday, January 27, 2012 - 3:30pm - 9:30pm
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Saturday, January 28, 2012 - 9:00am - 3:00pm
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Saturday, January 28, 2012 - 11:30am - 12:30pm
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Saturday, January 28, 2012 - 1:00pm - 2:00pm
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Monday, January 30, 2012 - 9:00am - 3:00pm
Recent News
SPARK Day 2012 offers First Glimpse of Zephyr
Outreach
Come one, come all to The Green Machine’s annual SPARK Day! On Saturday, January 21, from noon to 2 PM, FIRST Team 1816 will show off the progress on the newest member of the family, our 2012 Robot, Zephyr. We’ll also show various field elements that our robot will need to navigate this year’s game challenge. This day is designed for friends, family, peers, community members, sponsors, school administrators and robot lovers everywhere to see what the Green Machine has been doing these past couple of weeks since Kickoff.
FIRST’s 2012 Rebound Rumble Promises Multi-Level Basketball Play
The 2012 season has officially begun! On the 7th of January, 91 Minnesota FIRST Robotics teams gathered at the University of Minnesota for the Kickoff of the 2012 season. The challenge for this season is called “Rebound Rumble.” For this game, a robot has to be able to shoot foam basketballs into hoops that are placed 28”, 61”, and 98” off the floor AND be able to drive over a 4”-squared-off steel bump in the center of the field or navigate over one of three teeter-totter bridges to get to the other end of the field. For the endgame, the robot has to balance on a bridge, possibly with one or up to two other robots!
Subteams Show & Tell
At our last full pre-season meeting on Monday December 19, all of the subteams got to show off what they’ve been doing since mid-October. First up was CAD. They are working in Solidworks as their primary drafting tool and they showed off their prototypes and actual models of different things that could go onto the robot. Using the 2008 game “Overdrive” they created a real model of a 3D scissor lift. It made working on a real robot seem a lot closer to reality. The robot programming subteam has been working on wiring, among other skills, by working on placing lights on the bottom of the mecanum-drive robot.
