2013 OCCRA Build Season Recap
The AdamBots have been back in school for over a month now and we have been hard at work in preparation for the upcoming OCCRA season, which starts tomorrow at our own Adams High School. Our engineering teams have been working for a few weeks now on our robot design and build for the competitions and non-engineering (now called “business”) teams have also been busy marketing, attending outreach events, brainstorming ideas for the FIRST season and much more.
Many new students have also joined the team and workshops have been available so they can get up to speed with the processes and techniques which make robotics tick. 
The OCCRA game for this season, “Grid Lock,” involves supersized tennis balls which the robots throw (or any other method they choose) into a 5×5 goal. Two teams compete and at the end of the game robots have the opportunity to hang on a bar in the middle of the field for bonus points. Our build teams used meetings early on in the build season to come up with a strategy and design for the robot.
Recently, the Build Team finalized our design and began building on top of a chassis that was previously built. This past week, the build team made a lot of progress. We started building the shooter and made angle braces to support it. On the rest of the robot, we put bands on the roller system to carry tennis balls to the shooter and added a jointed polycarb flap to allow pickup from both sides of the robot. From there, we finalized the shooter and the chain for the roller system.
Other engineering-related teams have started meeting, also. Over the past three weeks, the Programming Team has been holding workshops using Lua to teach interested new and returning members of the AdamBots how to program. The team has also discussed the division of programming for our team’s three robotics projects: the Mecanum chassis, the simulation robot, and the OCCRA robot. The programming team has this week verified that the software required to program the OCCRA robot is functional. In the coming weeks, the subteam will develop the software for testing the simulation chassis robot and the “showbot”- an additional project we are creating to use in demonstrations.
New members have also had the opportunity to attend workshops. In the last 3 weeks of the build workshops, we have been working on building the showbot robot. The first week we completed building the Mecanum wheels, and learned different types of wheels and the pros and cons of using each type. We have not yet used Mecanum wheels on a robot, so we will be testing them for the showbot. The showbot will be used for pep assembles, a t-shirt cannon, or other purposes that are to be determined. The second week we built the transmissions as well as learning about different types of motors and how they work. This week we built the base frame, or chassis, of the robot and learned about the different types of nuts, bolts, and tools used to build our robots. The chassis we built may have to be adjusted as we continue to work on our robot, we built the chassis bigger to be able to adjust to the size as needed. Every member of the workshop got a hands-on learning experience each week of the build team workshop! 
Business teams have also started meeting to work towards a plethora of different goals.
This week in Marketing we had the opportunity to hang up the posters and fliers we have been working on to promote out first OCCRA competition here at Adams. We also have been working on the OCCRA pit poster that will inform people at competitions of who our team is and our achievements.
The Digital Media Team has recently been focused on getting jobs divided among members. We also discussed what we need to change on the AdamBots website and other social media websites we will use throughout the season, such as FaceBook, YouTube, Instagram and more. This week in the Digital Media team meeting, we talked about contacting alumni and asking them questions like how the team impacted their experience in college and in their job. We also talked about interviewing Adams students and members of other teams. We thought about having a periodical student/Alumni spotlight on the website about a particular student or alumni and what they’re do at the moment.
In the Business Plan Team this week, groups of veteran and new members were assigned sections of the Business Plan to proofread and look over. We also created a Dropbox account and further discussed potential updates to make for the plan itself, such as updated pictures, new sections, and different directions we could take it to best display the entrepreneurial goal of our team. Next week we will have a work day to update the business plan.
The Photo/Video Team has been working on finding ideas for Dean’s Homework, which this year focuses on displaying, in video, a story about a specific person or people on our team. We also started to plan and film for the Vlogs that we will create throughout the OCCRA and FIRST seasons. These Vlogs will include interviews, safety updates, team progress reports, and more. Last week the Photo Video team worked on generating ideas for Dean’s Homework as well as getting new photos of the 2013 OCCRA season for use by the team. The team has also begun to create new content for the AdamBots YouTube Channel, the first piece of new content being an interview with the team’s project manager, Jason Merlo. We plan on releasing weekly videos, including vlogs, safety clips, and more.
On September 27th we participated in Step UP for Down Syndrome at The Palace of Auburn Hills. The event was a huge success and we are very grateful to be able to help the community through our outreach programs.
On Monday and Wednesday, October 7th and 9th, we started teaching BASES classes at Musson Elementary School and Delta Kelly Elementary School. These classes aim to teach 3rd to 5th graders about engineering and programming using Lego Mindstorm building sets. The children were very excited about this opportunity and seemed to really enjoy the engineering components included in the program.
On Sunday, October 13th we participated in the CROP Hunger Walk. The team had over 30 team members participate, including a few mentors, raising money to help local food shelters.
The above community service activities are part of our new Outreach Sub-Team. This sub-team will help us organize currently scheduled outreach events, find new events to participate in, and educate the Rochester Community School District about how important our robotics team is to us.
s the OCCRA build season comes to an end, we are beginning to prepare for the first robotics competition to ever be hosted at Adams- the opening competition for the OCCRA season. We will be competing tomorrow, Saturday October 19th at our home school of Rochester Adams High School in Rochester Hills, MI. The competition starts at 10:00am and ends at 2:00pm. Admission to the competition is free and the AdamBots would like to extend an invitation to all that are interested in engineering, competition, and all-around fun!
Stay tuned for AdamBots updates on this website and on our social media. For video updates visit our YouTube channel, and like us on FaceBook for news updates. Follow us on Twitter for further information.
Written by Cameron Johnson
