Kickoff!

Last Saturday (January 8th) marked the kickoff of the FRC 2022 Rapid React season! We were introduced to the game and began strategizing what types of scoring objectives we wanted to accomplish.

Image Credit: FIRST

In the Rapid React game challenge, robots start in the center of the field and have to shoot oversized tennis balls (Cargo) into a two-tiered basket (The Hub) located in the center of the arena. Scoring Cargo in the “Lower Hub” is less risky, but worth half as many points as scoring Cargo in the “Upper Hub.” During the first 15 seconds of each match, robots operate autonomously from pre-programmed instructions, and Cargo scored in the Hub are worth double. After 15 seconds, robots are remotely controlled by their team for the remainder of the match.

In the last 30 seconds of the match, robots can climb on the four rungs of a monkey bar-like structure called the Hangar for additional points. The rungs are located at varying heights in each alliance’s Hangar, and the higher the rung that your robot climbs on, the more points your team scores at the end of the match.

Click here to watch the official game animation: https://youtu.be/LgniEjI9cCM

Prototyping

We prototyped multiple launching mechanisms to score Cargo in the Upper Hub. The two ideas we focused on testing a wheeled shooter and a catapult. We were able to reuse the shooter from our 2016 robot to test the aerodynamics of the Cargo. Students used our catapult prototype to evaluate the optimal trajectory of the Cargo when scoring.

Our intake prototyping focused on trapping potential bouncing Cargo on the field, allowing us to eliminate the need to wait for cargo to stop moving before we collect them. Previous years with similar game pieces enabled us to recycle intake mechanisms from previous years to test what types of wheels were best for loading Cargo into our robot.

After kickoff, we constructed a small scale version of the Hangar to test our prototypes. Our two main ideas revolved around a robot with multiple arms that reach out and grab individual bars, and a singular, windmill-like arm that spins around to grab rungs. Using these prototypes, we determined the value of each endgame prototype and how it would affect our robot’s design features as a whole.

With a productive Week 1 already wrapped up, we’ve hit the ground running and are aiming to have a drivable robot by the end of Week 2!

Roboteer Rumble

At 3am on Saturday the 23rd, we gathered to bring our robot to it’s final outing of 2021; Roboteer Rumble in Tremont, Illinois. This offseason was a tremendous opportunity to expose our incoming rookies to the challenges of FRC competition. We were able to showcase improvements made over the course of the season which led to us being picked 3rd overall in playoff draft. A 3rd place finish overall was a great retirement sendoff for our 2021 Season Robot, Polaris.

2022 Rapid React

We’re excited for the challenges the upcoming season, Rapid React, has in store for our team. Team 930 is actively preparing for Kickoff on January 8th when we will learn the specifics of the new game. Check out the teaser for the 2022 game below:

FIRST LEGO League

Team 930 has been actively developing a new FIRST LEGO League program in the Mukwonago area. We created 4 new FLL teams, and Team 930 students volunteer to mentor the elementary-aged members. Each of these teams will compete this fall at regional competitions, showcasing their project, robot, and teamwork skills. It’s exciting to see future Team 930 members already hard at work!

Team 930 Celebrates 20 Years! Robot update!

Our First Year

Established during the 2001 FIRST Robotics Competition Season, Team 930 has certainly come a long way. One of our former teammates recently sent us this clip from CBS 58 News from our first year. Click on the image below to see our 2001 bot in action!

Rotary Club Demo

The team hosted the Mukwonago Rotary Club last Thursday at the High School. Representatives from the team discussed the robot design in addition to explaining what the robotics team means to them. Thank you to the Rotary club for once again supporting Team 930 as one of our sponsors!

Nathan, our Programming Lead, explains how the vision tracking system was programmed on the bot.

SWENext

SWEBears is the Mukwonago Chapter of the Society of Women Engineers youth program (SWENext) hosted by Team 930. SWEBears is a group dedicated to working with young women to explore their passion for STEM and provide guidance on what career paths are available. The group will have opportunities to speak with other women who currently work in the field as well as engage with local companies and colleges. If you know a student that is interested in becoming a part of SWEBears, please email team930@gmail.com for more information.

SCRATCH & WIN

As part of our numerous outreach programs, our programming team is running a virtual introduction to programming class aimed at students grades 4th - 6th. Not only does this class give younger students a head start into the world of programming using a system called “Scratch”, but it also introduces those students to Team 930 to help foster strong team membership in the future. We have 25 students enrolled, and the first meeting was a huge success! We look forward to hosting more outreach events like this in the future.

Ed, one of our programming team students instructs our first Scratch & Win class

Robot Updates

Meet our 2021 robot, Polaris!

Our team has put a huge emphasis on our vision tracking system this season. We learned a lot from 2020 even though the season was cut short, and it allowed us to develop a really impressive model based shooter. This will allow our turret to find the target and accurately gauge distance and angle to put the ball on target with precision and accuracy with limited input from the drive team. We’re really excited to refine this system over the next few weeks in preparation for our competition submissions.

Our bot performing tests for the limelight vision based tracking system. Notice how well it tracks the goal even when the bot is in motion.

Our electromechanical and programming teams have done a fantastic job adapting the swerve drivetrain to our existing bot chassis. We can already see a massive increase in agility over 2020. This combined with the additional time our drive team has had at the controls to practice and Polaris is looking like a winner!

The new swerve drivetrain is putting both our bot AND our drive team to the test!

Mid-Season Build Update

Click to watch a time-lapse of the team assembling our robot!

The team has been hard at work preparing our robot for the new challenges that were announced during the kickoff. We have made some significant modifications to our existing design to account for this year’s demand for more speed, more agility, and more accuracy than ever before. Below is a quick summary of what the team has been working on the past few weeks.

DRIVETRAIN

Dominick, our Electro-Mechanical team lead, builds one of the serve assemblies.

One of the most ambitious changes we are making to drastically increase our robot’s agility is our transition from an 8 wheel TANK drivetrain to a 4 wheel SWERVE drivetrain. In a swerve style drivetrain, all 4 wheels will propel the robot and each can rotate independently to provide on-demand 360 degree motion. This presents a unique challenge to our design and fabrication teams in addition to our programmers as we have not used this type of drivetrain before. Everything we learn this year can be used in future bots for years to come. We are so close to being able to put the wheels on the ground and start driving it around to truly get a feel for how responsive our robot will be.

ROBOT HEIGHT

Our robot on risers preparing for some mechanical tests.

Our original design had a very tall robot that would excel at shooting over the top of defenders from any position on the field. One challenge we experienced with a robot that tall is a very high center of gravity which can cause the robot to rock and tip during aggressive maneuvers. We knew right away that this was going to need to change if we wanted to compete with the best in the 2021 season agility based trials. The decision was made to lower the height of the main tower by 12 inches. We were able to do this without compromising the design of our shooter or intake. The climbing assembly was also removed as it is not needed for these challenges. All in all the CoG of the bot has been brought much closer to the ground which will help to optimize performance.

GAME DESIGN CHALLENGE

Ryder and Aiden present their game design concept to the rest of the team.

The Game Design Team has been working hard to bring their concepts from imagination to reality. Coming up with a completely unique idea is a difficult challenge. With the March deadline on the horizon they have been in high gear hashing out the details and have started to bring their game field to life via CAD. We look forward to seeing what the final product looks like in the coming weeks!

Stay tuned for more updates!

The 2021 Season is Here!

This past Saturday, a masked up and socially distanced Team 930 gathered in the Mukwonago High School commons to tune in to the FIRST live stream with other teams around the world to see what the 2021 season had in store for us. We had already known the 2020 Infinite Recharge game would make it’s appearance again in 2021 due to the number of teams that were unable to participate last year due to the COVID lockdowns. During the kickoff stream, we finally learned how FIRST planned on adapting the competition to allow for teams to compete even if they are not allowed to attend competitions due to travel restrictions. 3 new competitions have been introduced this year, and Team 930 is excited to dive into two of them.

• Game Design Challenge
  FIRST has challenged teams to design their own FIRST Robotics Competition season. This challenge goes beyond just giving suggestions. Teams will need to thoroughly think out their ideas and create a detailed pitch which will be submitted to judges. Winning game designs will advance to additional rounds of judging with teams able to pitch the best designs directly to the lead game designers at FIRST HQ and elements of their game may be used in future seasons.

• Infinite Recharge At-Home
  The agility, accuracy, and speed of the robot in both autonomous and teleop (driver controlled) mode will be put to the test by a series of 5 challenges that we can complete right here at the high school. Unlike prior years, each challenge will pit us against a unique group of up to 30 teams from around the world.

An example of one of the speed and agility teleop challenges.

The team has jumped into action making significant changes to our robot based on its performance in 2020. We are excited to build on what we learned so we can continue to compete at a high level. Stay tuned to future newsletters to see updates on how the team is progressing!

Happy 9/30! Join Us!

Today is 9/30 and we wanted to take today to say TEAM 930 IS STILL HERE and still promoting STEM! The team has been meeting virtually over the summer due to COVID restrictions and have been working on projects in preparation for the 2021 season.

No doubt the 2021 competitive season will look a lot different than we are used to because of the pandemic, but we are still committed to our mission to create a fun and exciting environment to foster and promote skill growth in STEM related fields. We will be following all Mukwonago High School COVID-19 guidelines to ensure that our team stays safe and healthy.

If you, or someone you know, are a student that is interested in joining Team 930 we will be having our NEW STUDENT RECRUITMENT MEETINGS on October 13th, 15th, 20th, and 22nd. We are requiring that any student wanting to join the team for 2020-2021 attend at least one of these meetings so they can talk with current team members and mentors. If you are interested in participating, fill out the form at team930.com/member-application or send an email to team930@gmail.com.

We also are always looking for more mentors to join in on the action and help educate future STEM leaders! If you are interested in learning more, fill out the form at team930.com/mentor-application or send an email to team930@gmail.com.

We are excited to see what the 2021 season has in store for Team 930. Stay tuned for more information about the season in future newsletters!

COVID-19 and the 2020 season

With all of the recent talk about COVID-19 in the news lately, FIRST has made the decision to suspend the 2020 FIRST Robotics Competition. We are still processing the shock and disappointment of losing the opportunity to compete with the robot we worked so hard on, but we will look forward to planning future events with our sponsors and the community to continue to spread the core values of FIRST and generate interest in STEM. We are extremely grateful to our sponsors, mentors, parents, and members for all of the hard work and support.

See below for the official statement from FIRST:

Dear friends, colleagues & partners,

It is with deep disappointment that I share an update on the immediate suspension of the current FIRST season and the cancellation of both Championship events. This decision has been made based on guidance from the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and state and local health officials, as well as the declaration of states of emergency across many states/countries, the ever-expanding travel restrictions for schools, and in light of developments over the past 24 hours.  The health and safety of our community is our top priority, so we have decided to suspend all season play across all Programs worldwide, effective immediately, including the cancellation of both FIRST Championship events. Please know that FIRST Championship registration fees will be refunded.

This difficult decision was grounded in FIRST’s commitment to put the health and safety of our community above all else. During this challenging time, we have been working closely with our program delivery partners (PDPs) and event organizers around the world to navigate and mitigate the risks to our community due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). As a result, many of our events in the United States and around the world have been canceled or postponed, including more than half of all future FIRST Robotics Competition events. We acknowledge and appreciate the thousands of teams, parents, mentors, coaches and volunteers who have poured their hearts and souls into this season, and we share your disappointment.

The mission of FIRST has always been to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders and innovators, and we continue to be deeply committed to this mission. We know that you will have questions, and we will provide answers in the following days and weeks as we navigate what has been an unprecedented time.

Sincerely,

Larry Cohen, President of FIRST

Midwest Regional Recap

Team 930 arrived in Chicago, Illinois last week for the Midwest Regional. After a set of practice matches the day before we began competing in the Qualification matches on Friday. We started off strong by winning 4 our of 6 matches but noticed there were some issues with how our limelight was tracking the target causing a lot of our shots to land just outside of the outer port forcing our drive team to adapt on the fly. We tried our best against tough matchups, but ended up with a record of 4-4 at the end of Friday with 2 matches left to play on Saturday before Elimination Matches began. 

Unfortunately, we had two very close matches against solid teams on Saturday and lost both of our matches, leaving us in 26th place for alliance selection. The qualification record might have not been what we strive for but we were optimistic as we still had one of the best robots on the field. During the draft we were chosen by Team 2451 Pwnage, the 3rd Seed Alliance captain, along with Team 5822 Wolfbyte. We lost both of our Quarterfinal Matches against a strong 6th Seed Alliance but learned a lot about what we need to change to better prepare for the next competition.

Attending the Midwest Regional was truly a great learning experience for every member on the team as we adjust to this season’s competition level and expectations. We know what issues we need to improve upon as well as how to iterate on those tasks.

More to come next week!

Our Drive Team Jerseys made their debut at the Midwest Regional. Looking great, team!

We're competing at the Midwest Regional!

D-0 is ready for competition!

The time has finally come to put our robot to the test. Everyone on Team 930 is doing their part to make sure the robot (and our drive team) is competition ready. Also, in the spirit of the Star Wars theme for this year, we decided to name our ‘droid’ D-0.

The Midwest Regional will be held at the Credit Union 1 Arena in Chicago from Thursday the 5th until Saturday the 7th. We will be giving updates on our Facebook page after each match so be sure to follow us there.

If you would like to watch the competition LIVE, you can find a link to the broadcast, schedule, and standings at The Blue Alliance website. The GameDay stream list should also include our Regional.

We are excited to see our supporters and fans in the stands sporting our new logo. If you are in town, feel free to stop by the pits and wish us luck!

Onward to Chicago!

Loading up all of our gear for Midwest. This brand new trailer was made possible by our fantastic sponsors!

Sussex Mini Regional and Open House

Our robot shoots at a very impressive rate.

The team working on the robot in the pit between matches.

Sussex Mini Regional

The 2020 competition season has begun! Our robot started off strong just last weekend with a powerful showing at the Sussex Mini-Regional. Though we finished building last Friday, our robot performed extremely well and was able to launch game pieces into the scoring port from across almost the entire field! 

By no means is the work finished - we’ve learned a lot about how we can improve the robot from our experience at Sussex. From here, we’ll work on our climber for extra points in our endgame, give as much time at the controls to our drive team for practice, and we’ll work on improvements to prevent any possible jams in the robot.

Connor showing off the practice drive train to local kids.

Open House

Our Open House on February 17th was also a tremendous success. Kids were able to see our robots from this year and our World Champion finalist ‘bot from last year, and even had the opportunity to drive our practice drivetrain. Some of our amazing sponsors even showed visitors their company products, like COAPT’s prosthetic hand. The Milwaukee Bomb Squad showed off the bomb-stand Team 930 designed and fabricated for them, too. Fantastic local Lego League teams also showed off their incredible work from their 2019-2020 season. The turnout was fantastic and we wanted to thank the community for coming to see us.

COAPT demonstrating their prosthetic hands.

The Brickbusters FIRST Lego League team demonstrating their robot on a Lego League playing field.

Rebranding

Finally, the business team here at Team 930 has been working diligently to revitalize our appearance. We are hard at work developing our branding guide and implement standardization. As our team changes and grows, our logo needs to keep up. We’re so proud to finally reveal our new logo!

Week 5 Wrap Up

With only 1 week to go in the build season, there is still a lot to do to make the robot competition ready. The Sussex Mini-Regional on the 16th will be our first opportunity to see what our robot is capable of accomplishing. Unlike prior years there will not be a “Bag Day” which halted any additional changes so we will be able to use our experiences at Sussex to make sure we are ready for the Midwest Regional in Chicago the first weekend of March.

The team will be hosting two events next week, the week of February 16th. Our Annual Open House will be on Monday, February 17th from 6pm-8pm. Multiple levels of FIRST groups and several of our sponsors are invited to exhibit their teams and companies at this event. Following Open House, we are hosting a SWENext (Society of Women Engineers) event from 10am-12pm on Saturday, February 22nd. Kids from grades 4th-8th will be able to participate in fun STEM activities that explore different areas of science and learn about FIRST.

The shooter prototype makes a perfect shot into the inner power port during testing.

CAD

CAD hustled this week to create models of the final robot and mechanisms. Focus has been primarily on the Tower, which is the part that cycles the Power Cells from the Hopper to the Shooter. Moving Power Cells through the robot efficiently and accurately will be vital to our success.

Strategy

With the Tableau Database finished, strategy is able to collect data from different competitions. The team playbook was completed over the past weekend with different unique names for each strategy. They have also completed the Cycle Ball flow tool which has allowed them to begin running simulations. The Strategy team also opted to develop their own in-house scouting app to collect more accurate and relevant information during competition.

Business

We submitted our Woodie Flowers and Chairman’s Award submissions last week. With Chairman’s submitted, our Chairman's tryouts have begun. The tryouts will help determine who will be doing the presentations in front of the judges during competitions. Business has been finalizing our Open House and SWE events. We look forward to seeing you at these events on February 17th and 22nd! We will also be taking pre-orders for fan t-shirts at the Open House so be sure to get your order in!

Electrical

The electrical team has been working in conjunction with the CAD and fabrication teams to assemble and wire mechanisms like the drivetrain. They also helped set up a new REV encoder for the turret which they gave to programming to code for. Team members have also been helping the assembly process for the robot along with anything else that other teams need help with.

The competition hopper demonstrating how quickly it can offload it’s payload.

Fabrication

Fabrication continues to build robot components as the game elements are now completed. From CAD drawings, the metal shop has finished the final piece for the competition drive train, the gearbox. With another set of designs coming in, they finished building the competition hopper.

Programming

As the build season is drawing to a close, our programmers continue to optimize the code. They designed a layout for the Shuffleboard which is a dashboard that is located on the driver station. They continued the fine tuning of Limelight along with smoothing out the turret which now tracks the target with very little variance or lag. With more shooter testing being done, they have been doing more calculations to increase the probability of making the shot into the power port. More testing of the autonomous code has also been conducted.

Onward to week 5!

Week 4 Wrap Up

As the build season progresses, each subteam continues to work tirelessly. We aim towards a competition ready robot and are making strides in achieving our season goals. 

The team will be hosting two events during the week of February 16th at the Mukwonago High School. Our Annual Open House will be on Monday, February 17th from 6pm-8pm. There, multiple levels of FIRST groups and several of our sponsors are invited to exhibit their teams and companies. The following Saturday, February 22nd, we are hosting a SWENext (Society of Women Engineers) event from 10am-12pm. Kids from grades 4th-8th will be able to participate in fun STEM activities and learn about FIRST. Stay tuned for future details.

The drivetrain is undergoing thorough testing on our practice robot.

Electrical

The electrical team has been working in conjunction with the CAD and fabrication teams to prototype and assemble new mechanisms. To test battery health, electrical used a brand new tool called a CBA (Computerized Battery Analyzer). This will allow for more efficient battery usage. Thank you to our sponsors for making this possible! The team reached out to Cross The Road Electronics and discussed ways to improve electrical components on the robot and reduce potential error.

Business

The business agenda this week concentrated on finalizing awards, design and events. As our SWENext event was confirmed, our team has created a SWENext group, SWE BEARs. Business worked to finish with edits to the Chairman’s and Woodie Flowers Awards. They will be ready to be submitted next week! The team has been busy finalizing sponsors as both the team and drive t-shirts are completed. The business team has also been working on a special project that we are ready to announce soon!

The 3D printed field has been assembled.

Strategy

A 3D printed model has been created to give the team an interactive view of the competition field. We can use this model to test out several of their strategies. Several tools are being refined and prepared for competition. The Auto Strategy Creator Tool uses data from Roblu, a scouting app, to automate match strategies easily. The Ball Flow Match Simulator helps show the possibilities of Power Cell location on the game field during a match. This week, strategy worked to finalize their scouter accountability standards and plan scouter presentations. During competition, these scouters search for the best team prospects for alliances. Strategy will continue to improve upon these tools as we approach competition season to be as efficient as possible.

The Limelight system has been attached to a turret prototype and is tracking the power port objective!

Programming

Improvements on our code continues on a daily basis. Now that key parts of the robot are taking physical form, the team is able to see their code come to life. They’ve worked to improve the autonomous and drivetrain code and were able to create subroutines that control the Color Wheel mechanism. Trello has been implemented for task management and Github has been configured as a code repository. Finally the Limelight system is properly tracking the power port autonomously. This is a huge milestone!

A CAD rendering of the Shooter Mechanism.

CAD

CAD hustled this week to create models of the final robot and mechanisms. Versions 1-6 of the shooter and turret were completed. The turret acts as a swivel base for the shooter; version 7 of this part is being made. The shooter launches the power cells (foam balls) into designated scoring targets. These power cells are obtained through an intake which are transferred to the hopper, a storage area for the cells. The power cells are then brought into the shooter through the tower to be scored. Designs for the tower and other prototypes continue to be made.

Fabrication

Fabrication continues to build robot components as the game elements are now completed. From CAD drawings, the metal shop has begun to build the outer perimeter of the drivetrain and the gearboxes. The team has also been working in collaboration with other subteams to make some internal improvements. For electrical, fabrication has created a reel holder for the newly acquired loads of wire.

Onward to week 5!

Week 3 Wrap Up

Taylor shows off her paper bag robot that she made at the YMCA event with Team 930 member Olivia.

We have two upcoming events that the team is hosting at the Mukwonago High School. One event is our Open House which is on Monday February 17th from 6-8pm and is open to the public. Our SWENext event is on Saturday February 22nd from 10-Noon. We will be posting more details about these events in a future newsletter.

This week we welcomed the FIRST Lego League team Ten Tooth Gear to Mukwonago High School as they toured our facility this past Thursday. In addition to the tour, the children received the opportunity to learn more about FRC and were given Team 930 keychains. This past Friday, Team 930 was at the Mukwonago YMCA demonstrating our 2019 championship robot to local families. 

Amidst all of the outreach events, the team continues to progress on the robot. The team has worked hard this week as we meet our halfway point in the build season.

Fabrication

Without a playing field, we cannot test and work with our robot. In the woodshop, fabrication worked to finish the remaining field element, the Shield Generator; a 10 by 10 foot structure located in the middle of the field where the robot will hang during endgame. 

In the metal shop, the team has been working on creating the second drivetrain which is used for our practice robot. They worked with programming to finish the “wheel of fortune” and endgame hanging segments on the robot prototype, and have added a Limelight attachment to help with the autonomous portion of the game. 

Everen assembles part of the turret prototype with his father and mentor Steven.

CAD

CAD has been busy drawing up more and more prototypes, this year more so than any before. Some notable progress was mounting the first revision of the intake on the practice robot. This allows Programming to get an understanding of how well their code is working for an actual robot. CAD continues to iterate on the hopper design. We hope to have a final version soon. Another shooter has been constructed and the team is working towards the final design.

Programming

As Fabrication finishes prototypes, the Programming team continues to create code to make those prototypes work. The turret is the swivel base that holds the shooter and Limelight. Programming made PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) values that follow the vision tracking Limelight and turns the turret to keep the shooter always facing the Power Port goal. This will enable the robot to score as efficiently and effectively as possible. Programming also made maps of which buttons do what action on a PS4 controller and a GameCube controller. As all the prototype code is being written, it is being compiled into the master code class which keeps all the code together. And last, but certainly not least, Programming finished the LED code to make our 2020 robot look snazzy on the playing field!

Kenneth discusses the Infinite Recharge game field with the strategy team.

Strategy

The Strategy team worked on many different parts to create some successful strategies. They created a new tool, called the Ball Flow Tool, that will help them verify their strategies. After going over the scouting survey, they began to develop some scouter appreciation rewards to use throughout the season. Finally, they discussed how they wanted to view the data that they will gather during competitions using a software solution called Tableau.

Business

Business has been busy this week! The team coordinated the YMCA demonstration and we have been planning our upcoming Open House and SWENext Events. We have also been hard at work finalizing our Chairman’s Essay which is due February 6th. Work has also continued on designing our team t-shirts for the 2020 season. For the first time in our team’s history, we will have dedicated team shirts and separate ones for our family, friends, and fans.

Electrical

The Electrical team has been prototyping most of the mechanisms. It’s been a slow week as CAD is designing new prototypes, but they are gearing up for the next sprint where lots of components will be ready wire. Troubleshooting was performed on malfunctioning electrical components and the team worked with the vendor for replacements. This was great practice for competition time!

Onward to week 4!

Week 2 Wrap Up

The team has been busy working towards completing our goals for this week. We have made excellent progress and are excited to see how everything comes together before our first competition at the Midwest Regional in Chicago, the first weekend of March.

Jacob, Karl, and Enya showcasing the Wood Shop's accurate replica of the Power Port field element.

Fabrication

The wood shop immediately set to work fabricating the playing field elements that are essential for robot development. The Power Port objective was completed first which allowed the shooter development group to calibrate their designs against a real target.

The metal shop took the designs from the CAD department and began assembly of the drive train and the rotating magazine that will hold the power cells.

Programming

The team is coding a vision tracking system called Limelight for the autonomous portion of the game. The robot will need to navigate the playing field without player intervention for the first 15 seconds. Limelight will help the robot to accurately target the Power Port shooting objectives to score bonus points which may give the team an early lead in competitions.

Alex discussing the drive train with the CAD design team during a working session.

CAD

One of the most important parts of a great robot is a great design. Our CAD team drew inspiration from prior years to come up with a new and exciting robot for the 2020 season. Being able to modify designs on the fly helps the team see their ideas come to life on the screen before committing to fabrication. We can’t wait to see the result of their hard work in the coming weeks!

Strategy

The primary focus of this week has been developing the algorithms that will be used during competition to come up with the best strategies and assist with alliance selections. The team is hard at work identifying which key metrics will ensure maximum efficiency on the playing field. Strategy is preparing to train its scouting team which will navigate the pits at events to gather as much valuable information as possible about both alliance partners and opponents.

Dominick wires up a Power Distribution Panel which reroutes power from the battery to other systems.

Electrical

The Electrical team has been preparing their circuitry for integration into the drive train. Once all of the pieces come together, our robot will finally be able to move under it’s own power!

Business

The team has been planning several outreach events and demos for the upcoming weeks. We are hosting an event at the Mukwonago YMCA on January 24th where students and mentors will be showcasing last season’s world class robot to the younger members of the community to promote STEM and creativity. The week of February 17th, we will be hosting our annual Open House at Mukwonago High School as well as a SWENext (Society of Women’s Engineering) event.

Onward to week 3!

Kickoff

On January 4th, the 2020 FRC Season “Infinite Recharge” began with a Kickoff event hosted by Team 930 at the Mukwonago High School. Between the five local robotics teams that were in attendance, anticipation ran high as the game objectives and rules were revealed live to a global audience. Teams quickly began to collaborate on strategy and design.

The 2020 Season has a combination of new and exciting objectives including:

• An autonomous period where the robots will need to operate without driver input.

• Shooting power cells (7” Foam Balls) through various targets. The more difficult the target, the more points you earn.

• Spin a wheel a set number of times and stop on a specific color.

• Climb to and free hang on a horizontal balance bar. Extra points are awarded if the bar remains level.

If you would like to see the official game reveal video, you can find it here. https://youtu.be/gmiYWTmFRVE

We are extremely grateful for our sponsors. Due to their continued support we are ready to build a custom robot to execute each of these tasks. The team has put in countless hours already in week 1 designing, prototyping, and strategizing.

If you've considered sponsoring Team 930 for our 2020 season but haven't yet committed, we'd love to have you as part of our team for another (hopefully) World Championship season. Time is running out to get your company's logo on our banners, t-shirts, and robot. Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have regarding partnership.

The 2020 Infinite Recharge game field.