Build Season is six weeks of productive chaos. In the six weeks, to build the robot, multiple obstacles had to be met and over come. Starting with the Kickoff Event, the room was filled with excitement before the Reveal Video was played. When the game was revealed, the room cheered in excitement and joy as everyone immediately fell in love with this year’s competition. However, work had also just begun, and everyone was immediately busy with writing down as much as they could about the event and even more when the rules were released to the team. Brainstorming for this year’s robot had begun. The mechanical sub-team members were busy with possible designs and strategies to be used in the upcoming competition. In the next week, after numerous possible designs, from wheels to intake to scaling, a plan for the build was decided on and work had begun.
The build was separated into three goals; breaching; scoring; and scaling. These goals were prioritized by which was the most important to achieve before the six week period expired. Breaching the obstacles was complete almost seamlessly; however with the lack of a swinging arm, obstacles such as the Swinging Gate and the Port Callus were not cross-able. The scoring goal was partly met, being able to score a low goal, even in Autonomous mode. With the addition of a motorized intake system mounted on the front of the robot, the team was able to not only complete the scoring goal, but also get past the Port Callus and Swing saw obstacle now, leaving all but one defense that could not be breached. Lastly, the scaling mechanism was almost completed before the end build season on Tuesday the 23rd of February, but the team fell short of being able to attach the finalized product to the robot. Now that the Build Season has come to a close, most of the team is content with the progress they made during this time period and they all look forward to a great competition season in the upcoming weeks!