This week, the team has made substantial progress towards the robot’s design. At the beginning of the week, our members discussed possible designs and prototypes. Now at the end of the week, many members are using CAD to test the discussed prototypes, and some are continuing to discuss the robot’s overall design.
2018-19 Season
Glancing back at our season last year, we performed very well. Our robot was the best it ever had been, and carried the Robolancers through the competition. At Springside, our team put forth a good effort during the matches, but sadly did not make it as a finalist. Though, due to the extraordinary performance of our robot, we made to the finals of Bensalem. Unfortunately, the team did not get to advance to MAR, but still enjoyed the journey. Once the team was out, we were happily cheering on other teams while they competed.
RoboRUMBLE 2019
Last year’s RoboRUMBLE was an enjoyable experience for our teams. As they competed against 15 other teams, our teams gained valuable practice and one even walked out with a trophy. Alongside Robolancers Crimson and Robolancers Gold was a team that was ran by our programming mentors, and the team had shown excellent performance by the end of the event.
Build Season Weekly Update (#1)
It’s finally that time of year again, our build season has officially begun! Last Saturday, we went down to UPenn to witness the reveal for this year’s FIRST Robotics Competition. This year’s game, Infinite Recharge, is Star Wars inspired and teams will be responsible for recharging FIRST’s City’s shield generators.
Since the reveal, we’ve dusted off our thinking caps and have started our build season at full speed.
Flapjack Fundraisers 2019
On Saturday, November 16, our team had a Flapjack Fundraiser! From 8 to 10AM, Robolancer volunteers took over Applebee’s on Aramingo Ave and served unlimited pancakes, sausages, and drinks to our guests. Everyone had a great time!
In addition to serving food, we also had a raffle. At 9:45, we drew a ticket and announced our winner. Congratulations to our FTC Coach, Sabrina, for winning the raffle!
Sadly, our Flapjack Fundraiser was the last day for our Business Coach, Ms. Coutts. We would like to thank her for all of her mentorship and assistance to the Robolancers. This event, and many others, could not have run so well without her. We will miss you!
-Angelina Tjia
Ramp Riot 2019
Ramp Riot was a learning experience for everyone. It was a great way to scout the other teams and improve our game strategy. Our drivers had a difficult time adjusting to the stressful environment, but with the help of our mentors and coaches they learned the ins and outs and performed well. Being a human player was a great way for me to participate in the matches and understand the rules of the game. Working with an alliance was a challenging experience, and although it hurt us in the end, it was a positive experience that taught to recognize the intentions of others.
– Isabela Drummond
Duel on Delaware 2019
Our team has attended Duel on Delaware for a few years now, this year however, we accomplished the most we ever had at this event. Not only that, we have proven our dominance in the district. There was some difficulty at first with the gearboxes needing urgent repairs, but we still prevailed. We made it to finals with our Pennsylvania alliance consisting of us, Dawgma, and the Fighting Robotic Owls. In addition to getting a finalist trophy, our team received the unique design trophy for the centerwork of our robot, the cargo mechanism. In general, the event proved to be a success in giving our new drive team experience and just for our team as a whole.
-Oleksandr Goncharov
Build It!
On October 5, was Philadelphia’s first FTC workshop, Build It. The event, hosted by the Technabots, Girl’s High’s robotics team, was attended by two of our FTC teams, Gold and Crimson. By the end of the day, both teams made progress on their chassis. They also attended workshops on this year’s game, SKYSTONE, and on the Engineering Notebook.
Also, we had Robolancers volunteering at the event. Our volunteers helped teams with building, answered questions about getting started, and helped step up and pack up the event.
Overall, this event was very productive, and a good sign of things to come. The next FTC workshop is Program It on October 26 at Palumbo.
-Angelina Tjia
Blog post-Hat Tricks
On Saturday, December 1st, 2018, my brother and I came to Hatboro-Horsham high school, where Hat Tricks was being held, with donuts (to prevent any fatigue happening during Hat Tricks). I spent most of the morning waiting for the others to arrive and practicing with the presentation team. I later went to the pit to check on our robot, and then it was time for presentations. The rest of the presentation team and I were a bit nervous about presenting, but we managed to get through it. Once we finished, we went back to the pit to give our robot back to our teammates. Our team continued to fix problems on the robot until the competition began. Our matches against the other teams/alliances didn’t go so well due to the robot suddenly losing its wheels, getting stuck, and not turning on. But, we managed to be one of the semi-finalists. We didn’t get to the finals, but we gained new ideas on how to improve our robot. When the competition was finished, we packed our things and waited (totally not dancing while waiting) for the awards ceremony to start. During the awards ceremony, we didn’t gain any awards, which saddens me a little bit for our team.
-Tiffany Zheng
Hat Tricks
My experience in Hat Tricks was pretty stunning. When our half baked robot entered the field I was really mind-blown by the fact that our autonomous worked. Even though we almost defaced the crater. The games showed how much we need to ameliorate our robot. The day was filled with copious amount of confusion, yet in between the layers of befuddling issues I had an ecstatic time using analytical reasoning to figure out new ways to solve the problems. The spot light moment of that day would definitely have been when our passive latch pulled us up and gave us the win. However, it was disheartening to see that even though we were placed 14 on the leader board we were overlooked by the other alliances. As depressing as that is at the end of the day it was jaw-dropping to see other robotics team in action. All we needed to know is that we were above average in 14 out of 30. Next time lets go for number one
-Dennis Lam
