May 29
On Thursday, May 28 the team made an appearance at Parkwood ES’s science fair. From our place on the stage, we drove this year’s robot around on the stage, firing orbit balls into our trailer and, on occasion, into the happy crowd.
The kids enjoyed it immensely. When we revealed the robot from behind the stage curtains, a crowd immediately formed around the stage. Apparently, we were a bigger hit than the science projects themselves!
Once again, team meetings were delayed due to days off, this time the result of two snow days. With the school closed, students could not get back into the building to retrieve robot parts, but progress continued to be made by team members CADing parts of our virtual robot. For the remaining days, hours increased and we managed to continue to stay on schedule for completion.
This week, the programming subteam tested and modified the acceleration code and wrote the three-wheeled robot code for cRIO. Other team members redesigned the alternate shooter and continued to perfect the four-wheeled prototype’s frame and the harvester system, which can now load and dump orbitz balls. The backerman prototype was also tested and proved itself useful. The scouting subteam worked on designing the team’s t-shirts for this year and writing up information for several FIRST awards.
