The stress level is over 9,000 as we near the end of our 2014 build season for Aerial Assist. Build teams and business teams alike are working down to the wire to complete their projects for the season.

The Ball Shooter Team has done a great deal of work this week. We are almost finished with building the first shooter and only have to mount the latch to have it complete. As soon as that is done we will start building a second, identical shooter.

This week the Ball Acquisition Team has been working furiously on the finalization of the CAD and the construction of the practice robot. The CAD is very close to being completed and all the parts should be ready to be printed out so they can be made. Most of the assembly for the main pickup arm has been completed and very few things remain to be assembled on the practice robot except a few welds and a couple parts that need to be precision machined. The rest of the assembly has been going well now that we have overcome several design challenges and should be completed soon.

The Chassis Team has been highly successful this past week, finishing both chassis. We are now helping other teams by fabricating parts and putting work in wherever it is needed.

The Programming Team has completed the majority of the programming for each of the robot’s subsystems, and tested them using the sensors and motors available on the test chassis. The autonomous and teleoperated control systems will be developed next, along with the vision system. The programming sub-team has also begun testing this year’s chassis to verify the drive controls and logic.

This week, the Digital Media Team talked about the team interviews we are working on. We are also working on a posting etiquette presentation. We also held a WordPress workshop for new members of the digital media team.

The Marketing Team has been been sending out invitations to community and school officials and sponsor contacts to visit our school and build space. The team has also been working on the imagery of the robot alongside with the engineering teams. Soon the team will also be working with the Digital Media team on the Media & Technology Innovation submission.

This week the Scouting Team started to put together a playbook. As of right now, it consists of a field and the specific types of robot that we would likely encounter on the field.

In other news, we have acquired a new sponsor, Valeo, through one of our mentors! We welcome them to the team and thank them for their support.

This week we are also taking our team picture and having a vote for the name of our 2014 robot. Stay tuned for updates on both of those!

Make sure to watch our blog updates on our YouTube channel.

Written by Cameron Johnson

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