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.

OCCRA Update: Halloween Hoot, Waterford Kettering, and Road Rally

Written by AdamBot Student on October 30, 2013

The last few weeks have been very busy for the AdamBots. We have participated in another OCCRA competition, attended the Halloween Hoot cleanup outreach activity, held our annual team-building Road Rally, and more.

On Sunday, October 20th, we participated in the annual Halloween Hoot at Dinosaur Hill. We helped clean up after the Hoot by emptying luminaries and tying them up for next year, cleaning up  the trail, and organizing the sand box where the luminaries are placed. You can view pictures of the Hoot here. 

The week after was spent mostly in preparation for our competition on Thursday at Waterford Kettering High School. The Build Team worked on modifying and improving. We started adding a hanging system that, although mostly installed, is not currently functioning. We also continued to finalize the design of the rollers, test the shooter, and practice driving.

OCCRA Competition at Adams High School Recap

Written by AdamBot Student on October 22, 2013

This Saturday, October 19th, we participated in the first competition of the OCCRA season. The competition went very well, as we left with a second place finish and the Quality Award!

The competition took place at our home school of Adams, and we were honored to host the event. We arrived at school at 7:00am to help set up field and concessions stand, which was run by team parents throughout the day.  By the end of the day, after some students had joined us after taking the PSAT test, we had a total of about 90 students and parents there to cheer on the team.

This competition was our first glimpse of “Grid Lock” in action. While it was the first competition and we all were getting used to the game and the field, there was still some great competition…Read More

2013 OCCRA Build Season Recap

Written by AdamBot Student on October 18, 2013

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…Read More