Our mechanical team is responsible for designing, building, and modifying the physical elements of our robot. We started out with First’s starter bot, and built on top of that. We brainstorm more ideas on how to alter the design after testing it out in real life, which could happen in scrimmages with other teams or within our own practice sessions. Sometimes, we make our changes online first using CAD. After that, we use hex keys, screwdrivers, and other hand tools to measure, cut, and put together parts made from plastic and metal. As we build, we make sure everything is strong and works well so our robot can move fast and perform well in competitions. 

Once the basic structure is built, the mechanical team tests everything to make sure it works smoothly. We check alignment, tighten hardware, adjust tension on chains or belts, and redesign any parts that might break or jam during matches. We change our robot’s features as we change our strategy. Most of our changes are made alongside the programming team to ensure the motors and mechanisms respond correctly and do what the code tells it to. We also make sure to have a set of observers watching carefully, so we can get feedback from them as well as the drivers.

The software team needs a lot of members, and therefore it consists of 4 people. FTC has two main parts of the robot game:

The first part is the Autonomous Period, in which the robot goes by itself with no human help, and shoots balls into the goal. The only human help it can get is loading the balls in the robot. In this part, you need to code the robot a lot and make sure we account for every angle, and mess up.

 The second part of the competition was that we needed to control the robot using a remote control. This period was the hardest to code, as we had never done this before. Although the software team enjoyed debugging and creating new code very much, we grew and learned as a team. Our team’s specialty is in python, so we decided to use block coding instead of JAVA, since it saves time. 

Other than learning to code we also learned many physics topics, because we needed to understand at which angle the robot would best shoot into the goal, if it is at a certain distance away from the goal. All in all it was incredibly fun for everyone in the software team, and it was a great learning opportunity.