OCCRA 2012 Week 5 & Championship Recap
The OCCRA 2012 season has finally come to a close with the OCCRA Championship held on November 17th at Holly High School. It was a fun competition and learning experience for all of the AdamBots, and we ended it with much success.
The week leading up to the championship was, as always, a hectic one.
The build team made some last-minute modifications to the bot, including adding some new wheels to improve the traction of the robot and allow for more maneuverability and scoring success while being pushed around by other robots.
Besides the build and drive team’s usually pre-competition preparations, other teams were also busy at work. New members of the programming team continued to learn how to use java, while the experienced students continued to teach them how to create new code.
The marketing team also began brainstorming ideas for new methods of spreading the team message for the FIRST season. They worked on improving team communication and job management, and created a vague layout of what they wanted to do during FIRST.
The animation team are finishing up their OCCRA animation, and expect to have it finished by Thanksgiving break, with the only remaining task then being the rendering of the animation.
New student workshops continued on Tuesday with a programming lecture. New students learned the step by step processes on how programming a robot works and why it is important to program, especially for FIRST. After the workshop, an admissions officer form Kettering University came and talked to Juniors and Seniors on the team about the university and the different scholarships offerings, specifically the FIRST scholarship they offer.
Another workshop, the last for this OCCRA season, was held on Thursday. The new students learned about Dean Kamen, the founder of FIRST. They watched a video on his new project the Slingshot Water Purifier. This purifier is being used in third world countries to make distilled water from the previously dirty water, which kills nearly 2 million people a year. They also learned about the inputs and outputs of controller of the robot. The new students learned how this worked and were given many examples of what each input or output was.
As well as the workshops and team meetings, FIRST interviews were also held in school throughout the week. Students met with mentors to discuss their work with the team and how they can be an asset in the FIRST season. The majority of students will be returning for FIRST, and we look forward to having a large, diverse, and hard working team for that season.
The highlight of the week was, of course, the OCCRA Championship at Holly High School on Saturday. While we only made it to the semi-finals and experienced a few technical difficulties, we had an excellent time and played some great Goal Roll. Our alliance partner, team 1188, Oaktown Crewz from Royal Oak High School, were a great component of our team and did some great defense. Unfortunately, we were unable to get past teams 51 and 302, who were very consistent with scoring, especially withdoublers.
While we didn’t win in the end, we still mnaged to get both 1st Seed and the Spirit Award, and were once again nominated for the Foundation Award, which we have won for two consecutive years. Even if we don’t win it is an honor to be considered one of the best overall robotics teams in our county.
Our next big event is the OCCRA Banquet, where the Foundation Award results will be announced, and then comes the FIRST season, in which we hope to continue our success.
