Sunday, January 8. 2017
Today is the second day of build season. I’m pretty sure the only reason that you could get dozens of high school students up early on a weekend is for robots! Even though it’s a blizzard out and the roads are absolutely horrendous, many mentors and even more students slogged their way through the snow to make it here today.
We spent yesterday reviewing the game manual and then split off into groups to postulate and share different strategies. The students and mentors then all regrouped and shared out their strategies and we began prioritizing which ones we want to base our robot design on. After dinner, students broke off into groups with mentors to begin creating some prototype designs.
And now, as the wind and the snow whip around outside the school windows, we are gathered (more like barricaded) in the tech wing to continue our work. This morning, we finished up our initial designs and we are now discussing the pros and cons of each one. Hopefully, by the end of the day, we will at least narrow our choices down to one or two designs and continue prototyping on our work shop.
Meanwhile, some of the mentors and alumni are (very) hard at work building and painting a copy of the field in the wood shop for us to use while we prototype and build our robot, and to use during our local scrimmage towards the end of Build Season: Rochester Rally XIII! This year’s Rally is on Sunday, February 19th, and it is free and open to the public!
For the rest of the week, we will finalize our designs and prototype them, and hopefully begin working on our final build.
Happy day after Kickoff!
-Student Blogger Katie