“Welcome to the 2020 FIRST Robotics Competition, and this year’s game, INFINITE RECHARGE!”
Where on earth did the off-season go? Well, too late for moping, we’re back in the swing of things with a new FIRST Robotics Competition game. This year, robots, uh, droids, work together to protect FIRST City from an incoming asteroid strike! FIRST partnered with Star Wars: Force for Chance this year, and the game definitely has a ton of Star Wars inspired motifs in it. From the Aurebesh writing in the Game Manual, to what looks like a Death Star exhaust port, the wonks at Disney and Lucasfilm definitely played a major role in the look-and-feel of the game field.
Take a look at the video below for an overview of the challenge for this year:
Kickoff Day (January 4th)
The team got a fair bit larger this year, and for the first time in a while, we had to have a split kickoff, with some students attending our usual kickoff event at Long Island University, and others who watched the stream at the school.
This year, our coach ZQ gave the keynote speech, where he talked about how failure and screwing up are part of the robot building process, and that every FRC team member has a huge network of people who are willing to help them out with problems.
The game reveal video was quite literally a star-studded affair (well, not just because it was Star Wars themed… ish), with appearances by the stars of the most recent Star Wars films, and R2-D2. This year’s game field looks pretty interesting, and we were glad to have a ball shooting game again. This actually worked out great for us, since one of our prototyping sessions involved building a 2017-esque ball shooter.
We spent the time after kickoff going through the manual and writing down important information about scoring, As a way to get newer members of our team accustomed to reading the manual and picking out important details, we had small groups read different sections and had a member of each group present to the team. We also started cutting out parts of the field while allowing the game details to soak in.
Day 2 (January 5th)
Completed Loading Bay
Our second day of build was spent building more field elements, as well as starting to brainstorm about strategy and robot design. As a team, we decided that we definitely needed to be able to score with the power cells, as well as climb the generator switch. The team again split into smaller groups to discuss ideas on how we could tackle each of those sections, and presented the ideas to the whole team. Some good ideas were brought up, and many questions were asked. With some ideas in mind, the team continued building out the field, in preparation for prototyping later this week.
Day 3 (January 6th)
Completed Power Port and A-Frame
Day 3 was mainly spent building the field elements. We’re almost done! We currently have the Loading Bay, the Power Port (this thing is HUGE), and the A-Frames for the Generator Switch assembled. All we’re left with is some smaller components for the Switch assembly, and the Trench + Control Panel. We’re hoping to have everything built by Day 4 so that we can start prototyping in earnest.
With that, we’re off to go do more robot stuff! Stay tuned for more updates from your favorite robotic pirates!
