OCCRA Championship Recap

Written by AdamBot Student on November 26, 2013

The OCCRA season is now finished after the Championship at Brandon-Fletcher Intermediate School this Saturday. It was a competitive and exciting season, full of learning and lots of robotics. The Championship went well, as we placed in the semi-finals and took home the Technical Excellence Award for the first time this season.

The week leading up to the Championship was, as always, a busy one. Most teams met to work for the last time (for the most part) before our December break before FIRST.

At the Thursday competition two weeks ago, our robot had problems with the accuracy of the shooter, so the Build Team took a look and found two major problems. The first was that the balls used at Thursday’s competition were too inflated for our robot’s design. Second, the gear box had to be greased. Along with those improvements, we re-cut the PVC pipes on the sides of our shooter so that the balls were more centered when shot, and fixed a loose chain.

In the Build Workshop this week we finished disassembling one of our old robots, using power tools, and finishing the building of the control panel of the showbot. Also, we learned about the different components that make the robot work. We will not be meeting next week; the control team will be wiring our robot.

The Business Plan Team reviewed the myriad changes we want to make for each part of the Plan, and discussed our future goals.

The Programming Team has resumed its educational workshops and has completed the code for the chassis study robot. New processors have arrived which the programming team is looking into implementing for the FIRST season, as well as with the showbot project.

In this week’s meeting, the Marketing Team talked about what we have accomplished over the last few meetings. We also talked about new t-shirt designs that we may use in the future. We also talked about what we want to accomplish during the FIRST season, as OCCRA is coming to a close.

This week in Digital Media, we discussed the designs for our website. We will be asking other sub-teams for their input on the website. We are also getting recording the mission plans of other sub-teams…Read More

OCCRA Competition at Clawson and FIRST All-Girls Competition Recap

Written by AdamBot Student on November 17, 2013

t’s been a very busy week for the AdamBots. As well as the regular week of build and team meetings, we’ve also been to two competitions- an OCCRA tournament at Clawson High School on Thursday and an off-season All-Girls Event at Bloomfield Hills High School on Saturday.

As always, we had multiple team meetings this week, in which we got a lot of work done.

This week, the Build Team made a few improvements on the robot and spent a great deal of time practicing three-point shots. First, we added a new air tank to the hanging system so that is fully functional. We also added two support pieces of aluminum on the front of the robot. Also, to prepare for our all-girls FIRST competition on Saturday, we trained our all-female drive team and pit crew.

In the Build Workshop, we finished disassembling the control panel of one of our old FIRST robots.

The Programming Team developed code for the chassis-study team to allow them to collect force and battery measurements and drive the chassis-simulation robot in predefined paths.

The Marketing Team continued its organized system. We distributed new jobs, as well as addressing old ones. Things are running very smoothly, and students each have tasks to be done to keep the team in order. Near the end of the meeting, we decided which posters and banners will go into the pit for Saturdays all-girl competition. Students volunteered to help get everything together for Saturday, after school Thursday and Friday.

The Digital Media Team decided to start updating the existing pages on the AdamBots website. We’re making designs for the front page of the website, which we are discussing next week. We also talked about the interview layout, what questions we’ll be asking the mentors, alumni, and students, and who will be interviewing them…Read More

OCCRA Update & Girl Scouts of America Outreach

Written by AdamBot Student on November 10, 2013

This week was a big work week for the AdamBots. With no competition Thursday or Saturday, we spent our time in our sub-teams working hard and making progress.

This week, the Build Team had a shortened week due to two days off school, but still managed to be very productive. We fine-tuned the shooter and spent a great deal of time testing and improving it. Also, the back rollers had a tendency to move upward as balls were pulled underneath them, so we added braces around them to keep them down and locked in place.

In our Build Workshop, we have been working on testing the wheel strength and power of one of our favorite robots, Margarita. We tested the pulling strength of the robot as it moved forward to judge our strength pushing against other robots, as well as the resistance our robot has while pulled sideways to judge how we stand while other robots push against us.

This week, the Business Plan Team initiated the update process for the various sections of the Plan.

This week in Marketing we continued to go over our newly assigned jobs. We assigned new jobs to more of the group members, and gave out certain tasks designed for each job description. We now have a new orderly fashion that we hope will work as a professional system. Also, earlier in the week, we hand-delivered our thank you letter to the Rochester Hills Dentistry office. To close up the meeting we put together our FIRST pit that will hold our robot and banner, and learned how to take it down for future competitions… Read More

OCCRA Update & Birmingham Groves Diversity Competition Recap

Written by AdamBot Student on November 3, 2013

This week was an exciting one for the AdamBots as we competed in the OCCRA Diversity Competition at Birmingham Groves High School yesterday. We ended up taking first place at the competition and winning the Spirit Award!

Leading up to the competition, our sub-teams were working hard as always.