Here is the footage promised of our team's robot going over the ramp in the practice field. The purpose of the hinge was to keep the front set of wheels on the ground so it could help pull the robot up. Otherwise, since we had a long frame of 80/20, the front wheels would have been spinning in the air above the ramp.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Planning out the next 2 months
Now that our team has completed the FIRST Robotics Competition, we are all looking ahead: some to the rest of the semester, and some to next year. Two first-year students in particular are thinking of ways to improve our team's performance. The ideas I have heard include reorganizing the Robotics room, purchasing different supplies that fit with the materials we typically use, have a mock competition for students who didn't go to the competition last week, and have informational sessions about how to work with components of the robot (for example, teaching people about the mechanics of a gearbox).
With that, I am creating the SECOND Robotics Program. SECOND stands for "Stuff Especially Created On New Demands" and it's SECOND because it comes after FIRST. It's corny, but I want to keep the students engaged and active even though we won't be attending any other competitions this year.
As SECOND Robotics grows, I will use this blog to chronicle our journey. If you are another team that wants to collaborate on some post-season project in the Kansas City area, let us know! I'd also be interesting in following other team blogs.
I talked with one of the co-presidents and he was able to take footage of our robot going over the ramp in the practice field. I will try to get that posted in the near future.
~Coach Matt
With that, I am creating the SECOND Robotics Program. SECOND stands for "Stuff Especially Created On New Demands" and it's SECOND because it comes after FIRST. It's corny, but I want to keep the students engaged and active even though we won't be attending any other competitions this year.
As SECOND Robotics grows, I will use this blog to chronicle our journey. If you are another team that wants to collaborate on some post-season project in the Kansas City area, let us know! I'd also be interesting in following other team blogs.
I talked with one of the co-presidents and he was able to take footage of our robot going over the ramp in the practice field. I will try to get that posted in the near future.
~Coach Matt
FIRST Robotics Competition - Greater Kansas City Regional 2010
Now it is time to regale the blogging world with Team 2167's successes and failures at the FRC Greater Kansas City Regional last weekend. Since some of our students had tests that couldn't be moved around, we were able to bring a team of 10 students including the two co-presidents and (if I remember correctly) the rest of the executive board as well.
On Wednesday, Coach Jerry (the other Robotics coach who was also the coach last year) and I took the students and equipment down to the Kansas City area. A few students and I were able to stop by Hale Arena and bring the robot to our pit. It was nice to wander the Arena for a few minutes taking everything in since the pits weren't flooded with people and supplies. I also enjoyed being able to see the Arena in real-life since up until this point, we had only seen the CG video explaining the rules of Breakaway.
I could also tell from Wednesday night that the FIRST volunteers, coordinators, supervisors, referees, etc were very nice and charitable people. This past year, I had been having trouble with TIMS and after talking to one of the Safety Coordinators, I found myself talking with one of the head organizers as well as the head referee for the event (unfortunately, their names escape me). It was really nice to be able to say that we were from Team 2167 and people organizing the event knew who we were (and the various online mishaps we had been having this year).
Thursday was build day and we were able to get the full team to the Arena before the doors opened. The students and I were amazed to see teams with school buses and coach buses with people flooding out as well as costumed mascots, flags, and tents to set up in the pit. I was definitely taken back when I saw the S.W.A.T. team (Team 1806) walk to the Arena with riot gear and shields. At this point in our school's Robotics history, we are only sending the actual Robotics team, but it would be nice to bring student supporters to fill the stands for us.
As soon as the doors opened, the team went right to work and there was definitely a flurry of excitement. We looked all around us and many other teams were setting up banners and tents (including the PVC creation of Team 2334). Team 2167 didn't have any tents. We just had our robot on a dolly cart and the dolly was hoisted up on two sawhorses making an instant workstation with 360 degree accessibility. It was very lackluster, but I did enjoy the simplicity of it since we were able to start working on the robot right away.
The design our students had come up with is a two-piece frame with a hinge connecting the front and back halves. This is a picture taken by the Kansas City Star with our team and the robot tipped upside-down. The hinge was designed so that on flat ground, the robot would run normally, but when the robot would climb up the ramp, the hinge would bend the robot so the two halves would better hug the ramp (like a pill bug). The students also wanted to have the robot travel under the tunnel so this did limit the height of the robot. As an unexpected choice by the students, the electronics were mounted upside-down on an acrylic plate on the top of the back frame. The front frame was left relatively empty. Before the competition, we had been able to get the robot rolling and the hinge was fully installed, but the final decision about a kicker/arm had not been decided.
Like I previously mentioned, Thursday morning was a flurry of activity, where some students were working on the chassis, some were discussing a kicking device versus a PVC arm, and some students were constructing bumpers. At about 1:30pm, the team took the robot to the practice field and after connecting to a FIRST wireless router, some students took the robot for a spin. Due to time and miscommunication, we had not been able to construct a ramp before competition, so no one had seen the robot go over the ramp. Fortunately, the entire team was able to see the robot go over the ramp (and the hinge device worked perfectly - if we didn't have the hinge, our 80/20 frame would have been too long and the front part of the frame would simply be spinning in the air) and it was a very up-lifting moment. Seconds later, we wanted to verify that the robot could pass under the tunnel and it also passed with flying colors. (There were a man from another team who videotaped this, but I wasn't able to get his contact information.) We noticed that whenever the robot came off the ramp, it landed with a heavy blow with the two pieces of the frame hitting together. After the fifth time over the ramp, the robot landed with a hard blow and the acrylic plate the electronics were mounted to busted into three pieces.
At this point, the team went to work on getting a piece of plexiglass cut to re-mount the electronics and I took two students to some hardware stores to pick up Velcro, gloves, and some other supplies. By the time I returned to the Arena, the students were near completing mounting the electronics on the plexiglass. The students had also decided to install a pneumatic kicker to the front of the robot, so they had begun to piece that together as well.
A little bit later, we ran into some problems with the safety inspectors because of the bumper set-up. Since our frame was broken into two pieces, we had bumper coverage on all parts of each frame, but not the part in between the two frames. The quote from the inspector was "your frame needs to be 100% covered, but you don't have 100% of a frame, so we have a problem". Fortunately, we were able to re-open our bumpers and add a little bit so the frame was covered and no plywood backing was sitting outside the metal frame.
After that, it got to the point where we needed to get the robot through safety inspections. We saw that our first match on Friday was the fourth match at 9:21 so we wanted to make sure everything was squared away Thursday night. Unfortunately, adding the pneumatic arm on build day kept that from happening. Our student in charge of programming wasn't sure how to fully program everything and our pneumatics person was having trouble with properly wiring everything.
Then, the awesome generosity of the FIRST volunteers and other team mentors shown through again. A student went to the 'Spare Parts' desk to ask for help and shortly after, a number of mentors came with wire, an electrician's bucket of tools, and quick hands and things wired up very quickly. Once mentors had finished up, we rushed the robot over to safety inspection (at around 7:45pm).
The first check was the weight test, which we were able to pass by 19 pounds (which is fortunate since we weren't taking the best notes, especially with the pneumatic materials). Then the height/width/length test. We put the robot on the sliding platform and as it slid into the height/width/length checker, it hit the side of checker. We were in shock. The pneumatic piston had hit, so we slid the bunch of pneumatic stuff in towards the rest of the robot and "by the stretch of a zip tie" our robot passed. By the time we got this far, the building was closing down for the night so we had to put our safety inspection on hold for the night.
On Saturday, the whole team was at the Arena right away to get the robot right back into inspection. We had a number of small projects to finish, including installing the bumpers. The student in charge of programming started up the FIRST-provided laptop and all of the sudden, all of our firmware needed to be updated. Unfortunately, this was a major delay for our team. The first match went by and our alliance was able to win as a 2-robot team against a 3-robot team. (Fortunately for us, the way the seeding point system is designed, we still got points for the match as long as had people representing our team at the match.) The second match went by and we still hadn't passed inspections. (The funny thing was that since our alliances did so well over the two matches, we were in 8th place after the second match and we still hadn't passed inspection. Also, the students who did represent the team during our first three matches said that there were a number of robots that wouldn't move on the field so we definitely wouldn't be the worst team once we actually got on the field.) After the third match, the firmware was finally updated and after students broke for lunch, we were able to get the robot working again. Programming the pneumatics had messed with the voltage monitoring part of the software and after a very helpful volunteer got us through the updating process, we had problems with getting everything back to normal again.
During lunch, some students took the robot to the practice field and saw that with the pneumatics, the robot wasn't able to go over the ramp (the weight balance was off). So,with all the hassle of the pneumatics, we had to cut it all off to make the robot go back to normal.
We were finally able to get the robot out on our 4th match of the day. The students had accidentally placed the robot so it was pointing sideways before the match and during the autonomous stage, our robot charged straight into the other team's zone and slammed against the wall. It ended up blocking some shots, but we instantly took a double penalty. We were able to play fairly well after that although the traction between our robot tires and the floor made our robot hinge together while driving on flat floor. During the 5th match, our robot continued to buckle, so the referee shut off our robot during the match (since the bumpers were no longer 10"-16" above the ground). After that match we tried to work with the power level of the wheels but we ultimately zip-tied the robot's two frames together to basically negate the hinge.
The last two matches of the day went by without anything huge (we did accidentally run over a soccer ball and took a penalty during one match). We ended Friday as 2-3-2. One problem that did come up was that our wheel treads and the surface were gripping each other too much so we had to zip tie & epoxy some treads down and our turning became more limited during the day.
Saturday morning was much more relaxed than the previous day since we no longer had to worry about passing our robot through inspection. We did however have to fix one of our wheels since the bolt heads had been sheered off by the sprocket. It was nice to see that other teams were making small fixes and improvements that morning as well.
For our first match, we elected to play goalie for our alliance. Since our robot was having troubles turning, we set the robot sideways so when we told the robot to move forward and backward, it would move laterally to defend each goal. The other alliance only scored on us twice (once in autonomous when we couldn't do anything and one was a long-range "snipe out of nowhere" from a robot in the middle zone) and we were able to defend every shot in our zone while our alliance members got 5 points in the end. It was definitely our finest match.
Unfortunately, the next match turned into the worst match of the tournament. Before the round, we were told that Team 525 had a very strong robot and it had been able to grapple itself up nearly every match it was in. During the match, we played goalie although we ended up in a 2-vs-1 set-up where we were getting out-scored and out-maneuvered. Towards the end of the match, Team 525 got into grappling position on the ramp and our team's driver decided "I'm going to keep them from grappling", lined himself up, and rammed right into Team 525's bot. What my driver didn't realize/remember is that during the finale, if a robot is attempting to grapple, no other robots can interfere with it. So, our robot ended up ramming into Team 525 three times with each time getting a penalty and our team also got a red card for the match (a red card means that our team didn't receive any points for that match at all).
For our final match, we were paired with really good teams, and while we didn't do that well, our alliance won 9-5 (which gave us 19 points which really helped after the red card). During the last match, the robot was inside a tunnel and hit a soccer ball which caused the robot to hit the top of the tunnel and the safety light broke off. Fortunately it didn't set us back any and that match turned out to be without any penalties on either side.
Our team's rank had been fluctuating throughout the two days, going from as high as 8th early on Friday to the upper 50s late Friday and mid-Saturday. At the end of the event, we finished in 28th place and based on alliance decisions, we were 8th on the "if a robot breaks during the finals and can't be fixed in 5 minutes, we're calling on the top person from this list" list. After seeing some of the quarter-final matches, we packed up the robot and the rest of the pit to avoid a large crowd. Fortunately, I was able to see the last 1-1/2 matches between the final two teams and even though I had been watching matches throughout the day, those matches held a special intensity because the robots were really good, each team had legions of supporters, and the elimination system simply meant "the first alliance to lose 2 matches is eliminated" so every zone had an intense battle to watch.
I am very proud of my team's performance at the FIRST event. I realize that some dumb things happened (like the red card match or not having a kicker/arm finalized before the competition), but the students were able to overcome challenges and work together to get something done. A number of parents came to visit and after roaming all the pits, I heard comments that there were other pits where the robot was being worked on by just 3 or 4 adult mentors. I didn't go and look myself to get a sense of the numbers, but our team is definitely one where the robot was 100% designed, built, maintained, and operated by the students. I know that the students and I will definitely be able to take this experience back to the Academy with us to strengthen our resolve with the Robotics program and give us a purpose for the rest of this semester as well as the summer and next year.
~Coach Matt
On Wednesday, Coach Jerry (the other Robotics coach who was also the coach last year) and I took the students and equipment down to the Kansas City area. A few students and I were able to stop by Hale Arena and bring the robot to our pit. It was nice to wander the Arena for a few minutes taking everything in since the pits weren't flooded with people and supplies. I also enjoyed being able to see the Arena in real-life since up until this point, we had only seen the CG video explaining the rules of Breakaway.
I could also tell from Wednesday night that the FIRST volunteers, coordinators, supervisors, referees, etc were very nice and charitable people. This past year, I had been having trouble with TIMS and after talking to one of the Safety Coordinators, I found myself talking with one of the head organizers as well as the head referee for the event (unfortunately, their names escape me). It was really nice to be able to say that we were from Team 2167 and people organizing the event knew who we were (and the various online mishaps we had been having this year).
Thursday was build day and we were able to get the full team to the Arena before the doors opened. The students and I were amazed to see teams with school buses and coach buses with people flooding out as well as costumed mascots, flags, and tents to set up in the pit. I was definitely taken back when I saw the S.W.A.T. team (Team 1806) walk to the Arena with riot gear and shields. At this point in our school's Robotics history, we are only sending the actual Robotics team, but it would be nice to bring student supporters to fill the stands for us.
As soon as the doors opened, the team went right to work and there was definitely a flurry of excitement. We looked all around us and many other teams were setting up banners and tents (including the PVC creation of Team 2334). Team 2167 didn't have any tents. We just had our robot on a dolly cart and the dolly was hoisted up on two sawhorses making an instant workstation with 360 degree accessibility. It was very lackluster, but I did enjoy the simplicity of it since we were able to start working on the robot right away.
The design our students had come up with is a two-piece frame with a hinge connecting the front and back halves. This is a picture taken by the Kansas City Star with our team and the robot tipped upside-down. The hinge was designed so that on flat ground, the robot would run normally, but when the robot would climb up the ramp, the hinge would bend the robot so the two halves would better hug the ramp (like a pill bug). The students also wanted to have the robot travel under the tunnel so this did limit the height of the robot. As an unexpected choice by the students, the electronics were mounted upside-down on an acrylic plate on the top of the back frame. The front frame was left relatively empty. Before the competition, we had been able to get the robot rolling and the hinge was fully installed, but the final decision about a kicker/arm had not been decided.
Like I previously mentioned, Thursday morning was a flurry of activity, where some students were working on the chassis, some were discussing a kicking device versus a PVC arm, and some students were constructing bumpers. At about 1:30pm, the team took the robot to the practice field and after connecting to a FIRST wireless router, some students took the robot for a spin. Due to time and miscommunication, we had not been able to construct a ramp before competition, so no one had seen the robot go over the ramp. Fortunately, the entire team was able to see the robot go over the ramp (and the hinge device worked perfectly - if we didn't have the hinge, our 80/20 frame would have been too long and the front part of the frame would simply be spinning in the air) and it was a very up-lifting moment. Seconds later, we wanted to verify that the robot could pass under the tunnel and it also passed with flying colors. (There were a man from another team who videotaped this, but I wasn't able to get his contact information.) We noticed that whenever the robot came off the ramp, it landed with a heavy blow with the two pieces of the frame hitting together. After the fifth time over the ramp, the robot landed with a hard blow and the acrylic plate the electronics were mounted to busted into three pieces.
At this point, the team went to work on getting a piece of plexiglass cut to re-mount the electronics and I took two students to some hardware stores to pick up Velcro, gloves, and some other supplies. By the time I returned to the Arena, the students were near completing mounting the electronics on the plexiglass. The students had also decided to install a pneumatic kicker to the front of the robot, so they had begun to piece that together as well.
A little bit later, we ran into some problems with the safety inspectors because of the bumper set-up. Since our frame was broken into two pieces, we had bumper coverage on all parts of each frame, but not the part in between the two frames. The quote from the inspector was "your frame needs to be 100% covered, but you don't have 100% of a frame, so we have a problem". Fortunately, we were able to re-open our bumpers and add a little bit so the frame was covered and no plywood backing was sitting outside the metal frame.
After that, it got to the point where we needed to get the robot through safety inspections. We saw that our first match on Friday was the fourth match at 9:21 so we wanted to make sure everything was squared away Thursday night. Unfortunately, adding the pneumatic arm on build day kept that from happening. Our student in charge of programming wasn't sure how to fully program everything and our pneumatics person was having trouble with properly wiring everything.
Then, the awesome generosity of the FIRST volunteers and other team mentors shown through again. A student went to the 'Spare Parts' desk to ask for help and shortly after, a number of mentors came with wire, an electrician's bucket of tools, and quick hands and things wired up very quickly. Once mentors had finished up, we rushed the robot over to safety inspection (at around 7:45pm).
The first check was the weight test, which we were able to pass by 19 pounds (which is fortunate since we weren't taking the best notes, especially with the pneumatic materials). Then the height/width/length test. We put the robot on the sliding platform and as it slid into the height/width/length checker, it hit the side of checker. We were in shock. The pneumatic piston had hit, so we slid the bunch of pneumatic stuff in towards the rest of the robot and "by the stretch of a zip tie" our robot passed. By the time we got this far, the building was closing down for the night so we had to put our safety inspection on hold for the night.
On Saturday, the whole team was at the Arena right away to get the robot right back into inspection. We had a number of small projects to finish, including installing the bumpers. The student in charge of programming started up the FIRST-provided laptop and all of the sudden, all of our firmware needed to be updated. Unfortunately, this was a major delay for our team. The first match went by and our alliance was able to win as a 2-robot team against a 3-robot team. (Fortunately for us, the way the seeding point system is designed, we still got points for the match as long as had people representing our team at the match.) The second match went by and we still hadn't passed inspections. (The funny thing was that since our alliances did so well over the two matches, we were in 8th place after the second match and we still hadn't passed inspection. Also, the students who did represent the team during our first three matches said that there were a number of robots that wouldn't move on the field so we definitely wouldn't be the worst team once we actually got on the field.) After the third match, the firmware was finally updated and after students broke for lunch, we were able to get the robot working again. Programming the pneumatics had messed with the voltage monitoring part of the software and after a very helpful volunteer got us through the updating process, we had problems with getting everything back to normal again.
During lunch, some students took the robot to the practice field and saw that with the pneumatics, the robot wasn't able to go over the ramp (the weight balance was off). So,with all the hassle of the pneumatics, we had to cut it all off to make the robot go back to normal.
We were finally able to get the robot out on our 4th match of the day. The students had accidentally placed the robot so it was pointing sideways before the match and during the autonomous stage, our robot charged straight into the other team's zone and slammed against the wall. It ended up blocking some shots, but we instantly took a double penalty. We were able to play fairly well after that although the traction between our robot tires and the floor made our robot hinge together while driving on flat floor. During the 5th match, our robot continued to buckle, so the referee shut off our robot during the match (since the bumpers were no longer 10"-16" above the ground). After that match we tried to work with the power level of the wheels but we ultimately zip-tied the robot's two frames together to basically negate the hinge.
The last two matches of the day went by without anything huge (we did accidentally run over a soccer ball and took a penalty during one match). We ended Friday as 2-3-2. One problem that did come up was that our wheel treads and the surface were gripping each other too much so we had to zip tie & epoxy some treads down and our turning became more limited during the day.
Saturday morning was much more relaxed than the previous day since we no longer had to worry about passing our robot through inspection. We did however have to fix one of our wheels since the bolt heads had been sheered off by the sprocket. It was nice to see that other teams were making small fixes and improvements that morning as well.
For our first match, we elected to play goalie for our alliance. Since our robot was having troubles turning, we set the robot sideways so when we told the robot to move forward and backward, it would move laterally to defend each goal. The other alliance only scored on us twice (once in autonomous when we couldn't do anything and one was a long-range "snipe out of nowhere" from a robot in the middle zone) and we were able to defend every shot in our zone while our alliance members got 5 points in the end. It was definitely our finest match.
Unfortunately, the next match turned into the worst match of the tournament. Before the round, we were told that Team 525 had a very strong robot and it had been able to grapple itself up nearly every match it was in. During the match, we played goalie although we ended up in a 2-vs-1 set-up where we were getting out-scored and out-maneuvered. Towards the end of the match, Team 525 got into grappling position on the ramp and our team's driver decided "I'm going to keep them from grappling", lined himself up, and rammed right into Team 525's bot. What my driver didn't realize/remember is that during the finale, if a robot is attempting to grapple, no other robots can interfere with it. So, our robot ended up ramming into Team 525 three times with each time getting a penalty and our team also got a red card for the match (a red card means that our team didn't receive any points for that match at all).
For our final match, we were paired with really good teams, and while we didn't do that well, our alliance won 9-5 (which gave us 19 points which really helped after the red card). During the last match, the robot was inside a tunnel and hit a soccer ball which caused the robot to hit the top of the tunnel and the safety light broke off. Fortunately it didn't set us back any and that match turned out to be without any penalties on either side.
Our team's rank had been fluctuating throughout the two days, going from as high as 8th early on Friday to the upper 50s late Friday and mid-Saturday. At the end of the event, we finished in 28th place and based on alliance decisions, we were 8th on the "if a robot breaks during the finals and can't be fixed in 5 minutes, we're calling on the top person from this list" list. After seeing some of the quarter-final matches, we packed up the robot and the rest of the pit to avoid a large crowd. Fortunately, I was able to see the last 1-1/2 matches between the final two teams and even though I had been watching matches throughout the day, those matches held a special intensity because the robots were really good, each team had legions of supporters, and the elimination system simply meant "the first alliance to lose 2 matches is eliminated" so every zone had an intense battle to watch.
I am very proud of my team's performance at the FIRST event. I realize that some dumb things happened (like the red card match or not having a kicker/arm finalized before the competition), but the students were able to overcome challenges and work together to get something done. A number of parents came to visit and after roaming all the pits, I heard comments that there were other pits where the robot was being worked on by just 3 or 4 adult mentors. I didn't go and look myself to get a sense of the numbers, but our team is definitely one where the robot was 100% designed, built, maintained, and operated by the students. I know that the students and I will definitely be able to take this experience back to the Academy with us to strengthen our resolve with the Robotics program and give us a purpose for the rest of this semester as well as the summer and next year.
~Coach Matt
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Introduction and Salutation - Coach Matt
Hello again!
Now that I have introduced the team to the blogging world, I figure that I should introduce myself. You can call me Coach Matt. This is my first year with Team 2167 as well as my first year working at the Missouri Academy. My job title is Residential Counselor, which is a cross between a student Resident Assistant/Community Advisor/etc and a professional Hall Director. I completed a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics this past summer at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities.
This year was definitely one of ups and downs for Team 2167. The fall semester flew by without much accomplishment and the construction of the robot was towards the end of the build season. (The Academy students take the same college classes as traditional college students here so their winter break is longer than normal high schools, which cuts into the build season. This combined with the fact that students have the college schedule and no solid time for everyone to meet together gives us some challenges during build season.)
Now that the actual competition season is over for us (which will be chronicled on this blog shortly), we are all able to take some time to breathe a sigh of relief. However, I also think that there are a number of things I can do to get the team on the right foot for next year.
~Coach Matt
Now that I have introduced the team to the blogging world, I figure that I should introduce myself. You can call me Coach Matt. This is my first year with Team 2167 as well as my first year working at the Missouri Academy. My job title is Residential Counselor, which is a cross between a student Resident Assistant/Community Advisor/etc and a professional Hall Director. I completed a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics this past summer at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities.
This year was definitely one of ups and downs for Team 2167. The fall semester flew by without much accomplishment and the construction of the robot was towards the end of the build season. (The Academy students take the same college classes as traditional college students here so their winter break is longer than normal high schools, which cuts into the build season. This combined with the fact that students have the college schedule and no solid time for everyone to meet together gives us some challenges during build season.)
Now that the actual competition season is over for us (which will be chronicled on this blog shortly), we are all able to take some time to breathe a sigh of relief. However, I also think that there are a number of things I can do to get the team on the right foot for next year.
~Coach Matt
Introduction and Salutation - Team 2167
Greetings!
This blog is designed to serve as the blog for FIRST Robotics Competition Team 2167: Missouri Academy of Science, Mathematics, and Computing. The Missouri Academy is a two-year early-entrance-to-college program located on the campus of Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The students who attend the Academy are 11th and 12th grade students who excel in the classroom and as an institution, we are focused on the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).
Our Robotics program is currently in its fourth year of existance. During this time, our team has grown to be a well-known STEM student group at the Academy. However, since the Academy is a two-year program, retention is a challenge we naturally encounter every year as well as passing information from one group to the next.
During our rookie year of 2007, we competed at the St Louis Regional event and had a 3-4-1 track record there. For the past three years (including the 2009-2010 season), we have competed at the Greater Kansas City Regional and our track record has been 4-3-0, 3-4-0, and 4-4-2 this year. This information is taken from thebluealliance.net, which doesn't include final rankings.
This entry is simply meant to introduce the team to the blogging world. Our performance at the FIRST competition this past weekend will be chronicled in the very near future.
~Team 2167
For more information about FIRST (Foundation of Innovation and Recognition of Science and Technology) and the FIRST Robotics Competition, you can look at FIRST's website: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/
This blog is designed to serve as the blog for FIRST Robotics Competition Team 2167: Missouri Academy of Science, Mathematics, and Computing. The Missouri Academy is a two-year early-entrance-to-college program located on the campus of Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The students who attend the Academy are 11th and 12th grade students who excel in the classroom and as an institution, we are focused on the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).
Our Robotics program is currently in its fourth year of existance. During this time, our team has grown to be a well-known STEM student group at the Academy. However, since the Academy is a two-year program, retention is a challenge we naturally encounter every year as well as passing information from one group to the next.
During our rookie year of 2007, we competed at the St Louis Regional event and had a 3-4-1 track record there. For the past three years (including the 2009-2010 season), we have competed at the Greater Kansas City Regional and our track record has been 4-3-0, 3-4-0, and 4-4-2 this year. This information is taken from thebluealliance.net, which doesn't include final rankings.
This entry is simply meant to introduce the team to the blogging world. Our performance at the FIRST competition this past weekend will be chronicled in the very near future.
~Team 2167
For more information about FIRST (Foundation of Innovation and Recognition of Science and Technology) and the FIRST Robotics Competition, you can look at FIRST's website: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/
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