As the FIRST Robotics season approaches in a matter of weeks with both a looming and invigorating certainty, Edina’s Green Machine members are gearing up and training up to prepare for another fun and exciting season. In the last few weeks, I have been visiting with various subteams. First up, our team’s Facilities and Programming subteams.
In the Facilities camp, training new members has been a crucial task for veterans. They have been working on developing skills by designing and building a new banner system for our robot pit this season. They’ve engineered an ingenious system that can hold up to four banners by rearranging them to maximize space efficiency. This aesthetically appealing design allows us to exhibit our proudest achievements while remaining functional and efficient.
Training new recruits has also been the focus of the Programming subteam, with most training sessions devoted to three main areas: mecanum robot drive, beta testing of new C/C++ code, and a newly completed scouting software program and training regimen. Programming lead Alex O. has been using our mecanum robot, which capitalizes on an innovative design that rockets around in any direction, to demonstrate and teach new members the three different programming languages used to program FIRST robots: JAVA, LabVIEW and C/C++. Our veteran programmers have been immersed in Beta Testing, laying their hands on code that has yet to be released to other teams. Beta Testing new code is a good thing, because strange and unexpected things happen with new code. The Beta Testing group reports their findings to FIRST, which helps make sure that every FRC team is up-to-date on new robot programming.
Using input from our team’s lead game strategists and scouts, Alex O. also developed a software program that helps amass and present all of the information we gather and learn about teams and robots when at competitions. Our next task is to train all team members in what to look for in a competition robot. This new software had its own Beta Test at the recent Minne-Mini Regional in Prior Lake. The event was a great opportunity to immerse our rookie members in a real FIRST mini-competition. We plan to revise our new software program so that it’s more than ready for the 2012 Lake Superior Regional at the DECC in Duluth, MN.