BEAST Robotics had a very eventful weekend, attending our first scrimmage of the year at Sussex Hamilton High School! The team worked for six weeks straight to create a working robot for this important day, and we are excited with the results that we have achieved so far!
Due to our success with the Impact Award last year, we, along with Team 2830 RoboTigers, were invited to host an Impact Award information session at the scrimmage! Our Business Team gave an informative presentation highlighting the important aspects of a good Impact Award submission and provided pointers for a great presentation. Their session was educational, fun, and well-received by all!
The Sussex Scrimmage was a great opportunity for us to see how our robot would perform on a field that is similar to the official competition field. The Drive Team was able to better understand the logistics of this year’s challenge, including how long it takes to score points and how much of the field the driver can see depending on the robot’s position (the robot doesn’t have an onboard camera yet). They experienced a few glitches, but were able to overcome these setbacks, making the final two matches the best of the day. The Drive Team continues to practice and improve.
The Mechanical Team has been working hard these past few weeks, including working late nights to ensure a successful prototype. They are proud of the progress they saw at the scrimmage. Now, their goal is to create a production bot, which is a new, fine-tuned version of the robot that was used for the scrimmage. They also plan to make adjustments to the shooter to make it more accurate.
The Software Team had limited time to work with the robot, but they made the most out of the amount of time they had. They did a great job adjusting between matches, which contributed to the success the team had in the last two matches. They are now taking the lessons they learned from the scrimmage and are using them to create and test code for the autonomous portion of the match.
The Electrical Team is especially proud of the feedback they received from the Head Inspector at the scrimmage. The inspector examined the robot and said everything looked great, especially the wiring! They are now wiring components on the second chassis, which will become our production robot.
The Strategy Team tested “Version 1” of their match scouting app at the scrimmage! Thank you to our teammates – students and mentors – who scouted matches and provided feedback about the app. Overall, scouts said the app was easy to understand and use, but it still needs some fine-tuning. Currently, the Strategy Team is working on creating our pit scouting app and preparing to train our scouts for the Wisconsin Regional.
Overall, BEAST is energized by what we learned at the Sussex Scrimmage and looking forward to the Wisconsin Regional in three weeks! The Wisconsin Regional is free and open to the public, so we hope you will join us March 16 and 17 at the UWM Panther Arena to cheer us on! We’ll have more details about the Wisconsin Regional in our next newsletter.