Team 293 SPIKE
Build Season Newsletter
January, 2020 Edition #1
| Introduction |
Dear Sponsors and Parents,
First and foremost, the team is grateful to you for your generous sponsorship to SPIKE Team 293! With your continued support, the team will thrive. There are a couple of updates we would like to share with you.
| Build Season Begins! |
Build season officially started on January 4, 2020! The team went to Montgomery High School in New Jersey and watched a live stream of the announcement for 2020’s FRC event. The students then went back to the high school and spent a day researching and reading the manual. This year’s competitive game is known as Infinite Recharge. Teams have to maneuver through an elaborate field to score points and provide energy to power a shield generator. The game will require robots to shoot balls into openings, turn and accurately spin a colored wheel to a specific color, and hoist and balance themselves up onto a gigantic “beam scale” in the end.
Here is a picture and a link to a video of the game
| Strategy and Entrepreneurship |
The team has spent the last 2 weeks brainstorming strategies and working on the robot. In addition, SPIKE 293 has formed a dedicated strategy team led by Aryan Agarwal and Nick Bailey. They’ve conducted research across the Internet looking for the best way to score the most points and have run a human simulation of the event. The whole team was also involved in modeling the game with a cardboard field to test different strategies. This new emphasis on strategy is something that we believe we overlooked last year. Additionally, the entrepreneurship side of the team has started to work on sending out benefits for sponsors. Entrepreneurs have also started to work on the Chairman’s application. Finally, SPIKE 293’s student board and mentors have decided to make Tuesday a rest day. By doing so, we believe our team will be more efficient throughout the boot camp season.
| Building the Robot |
The team has also started the early stages in its process for building the robot. The team is using its work in strategy to conceptualize the different features that this year’s robot will have. The first step for building the robot involves using Onshape, which is a type of CAD (computer-aided design) modeling software. Each part is designed on Onshape, and then fabricated with tools in the team’s shop. Last year, nearly 100 unique parts were designed, and about 200 parts were fabricated for the robot. The team will most likely be reaching similar numbers this year. There is also a group of students involved in coding that have already started writing the programming for the robot. Since this year’s game includes an autonomous period, where robots will only be controlled by their code, coding will be extremely important to our team’s success during competitions.
Thank you and please stay tuned for more.
Sincerely,
Brian Chin
Chief Development Officer
| Photos |
