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myRobot.TIMETRAVEL(BlackHole Device, FluxCapacitor);

Posted by Anna on January 24, 2010

So.... we're already 1/3 of the way done with build season! I think that the space/time continuum actually does get skewed ever so slightly during build season because of the increase in energy of robotics people which results in a slight temporal shift and an increase in the rate at which time flows.

Despite the fact that time is going by crazy fast, we've been accomplishing quite a lot within the last week. We've finalized an 8-wheel chassis design, which is something we haven't done before. Our CAD drawings of the chassis look promising though, so hopefully we'll have a working chassis within a week. We've also prototyped a manipulator, which can thwack a soccer ball a good fifty-ish feet, which is quite impressive and the right distance we'll need for the competition, so this is also looking very promising. Now we just have to figure out how to stick it on the chassis, and voila, we have a robot ready for competition.

A lot of teams have been contacting us with questions, most of which are concerning communication and dashboard issues. Seems like every year everyone has issues with the wireless connections. Fortunately we've been able to help them out, so there won't be quite as much confusion in the future. There's a somewhat tedious procedure in which teams must download, undownload, and then re-download the dashboard software in order to get the latest version, which has of course amounted to quite a bit of confusion. Hopefully most teams will have figured it out within the next few weeks, or else there'll be mucho confusion at competitions when some people have different dashboards than other people.

I've just realized that build season is very good for my health, because I've been getting significantly more exercise than usual from all the running back and forth from the workshop in the high school to the computer room in the middle school. Then again, I've probably been gaining all that weight back from all the food people provide at team meetings. But of course, the food is very necessary, or else all those darn zombies on the team will resort back to their brain-eating, and I kind of need my brain thank you very much.