It has been a great week! I learned how to calculate gear ratios and put gear boxes together with Kayli, learning that nothing is simple in robotics; we didn't have the right parts so we ended up putting the gear box together with some rubberbands we found in the chem lab... This was for the chassis team to visualize how much space they would need for it, but once we brought it to them they had disassembled the chassis! Ah well, at least we calculated the speed for a few different configurations and they picked the one they wanted.

More recently I worked with the bopper team. Our goal is to create a modular robot, which will give us the ability to change our strategy for different games, most likely a bopper and a wheeled shooter. The bopper would be used to pass the ball softly over the truss for another robot or ourselves to catch it. We tested different types, sizes, and amounts of wheels, testing how high the ball was thrown, and how accurately. When I left on Friday they were testing smaller wheels with a gap inbetween to guide the ball.

From what I've heard we met our goal to have the robot driving by 4 on Friday! The chassis team has been working hard to finish this week, and the electronics team designed the electronics and added it on. This is great because now we will have a lot of practice driving which is one of the five P's: prepared!

Overall it's been a successful week. I'm so glad that I'm doing robotics this year, it's been great learning about all the different systems and getting to know everyone, and don't forget about the well stocked food cabinet! Good luck everyone in these next two weeks before the stop build day!

-Alex Bruce