At 9:30 AM on Saturday morning, around seventy students and parents assembled in a large conference room at Vecna Technologies’ offices. Our team’s president and vice-president gave a PowerPoint introduction on what to expect from the FIRST telecast and the coming six-week build season. Specific policy changes, such as the new practice of yellow-carding unsafe members, were announced and the commitment expected from students and parents was described.
Then at 10:00am, the telecast began. Several speeches were given by such illustrious personages as FIRST founders Dean Kamen and Woodie Flowers, along with a New Hampshire congressman. Then the exciting part began: the explanation of this year’s game, Lunacy. The telecast ended with a quiz show designed to acclimate teams to important rules and game specifications.
After the telecast, we ate lunch and split into five groups to brainstorm ideas for this year’s robot. Though initially daunted by the game’s challenging conditions, especially the low-friction playing field, our members enthusiastically contributed ideas for possible methods of movement, ball manipulation, and interaction with other robots. The new parents split into a separate group where they had a discussion about their role on the team. Later, the groups came back together to show their ideas and discuss them as a group. Although no single consensus was reached, we planned to meet the following day to continue debating ideas and eventually prototype several of them.
