28 Days until Week 1 Regionals...

4 weeks and the minibot will be making it's first climb on a real field. Not needing to ship the minibot will give us more time for iteration. Right now we're focusing on the last few variables that will influence our final design. Weight is about as low as it can be. After a few more tests we will have our wheel size and gear ratio down. The goal is 3 Seconds or less with deployment. We're almost there right now, 4 weeks from now we should be able to consistently be at that mark.

I'm really happy with the deployment mechanism. I thought we were going the direction of drawer slides or some sort of slide out mechanism but the design that one of our Senior students came up with is simple, elegant and most importantly, fast and consistent. I can't wait to see it on the field.

The final design of our "gripper" has gone into CAD and some parts have been sent out to be machined. Saturday will be a big day for us. Gripper parts should come back, the arm parts just need to be assembled, we might have a "scoring" robot on Saturday.

We put the drive train through some tests and those Supershifters are as impressive as I thought they would be. We're very happy with what they will do for us.

The Chairman's award is due in just 14 days and I just read the most recent revision. We are trying something a little different this year that I think will resonate well with the judges. Ill post the completed essay once it's submitted.

I'll try to post some videos of the robot and minibot to our team Youtube channel on Saturday.

19 Days until Ship Day!

-Justin