Today was the FTC kickoff! Adelaide, Isabella, and Rachel all came, and we had a lot of fun! We decided to primarily follow the rookie team track, which consisted of three classes by other teams.
The first class was called Building Your First Robot which team EPIC covered. They talked about everything from picking Tetrix vs Matrix, to what way to design the robot, and even a bit of what an engineering notebook should include. It was a great class, and certainly the easiest to understand, but we had already done most of the things that they talked about (if you have been following the blog, you know that we are mostly done building our robot). The brief part of their talk about the engineering notebook was interesting, and Isabella has volunteered to do most of the engineering notebook, such as compiling all of these blog posts, a description of our team etc. The second class was the only one we split up on. Adelaide and Isabella went to Making your Robot Move presented by the Motorbolts, while Rachel went to Java Programming presented by the Ponytail Posse. Java Programming was a bit confusing as a rookie team, although it was on the veteran track, so we expected that. After reading over the presentation a second time when we got back home, it made more sense, although a lot of the presentation was talking about RobotC (the programming software used in previous years) compared to Java, which is what we will use this year. One thing that we learned was to use Source Code control so that we don't have to re-do our code multiple times. Making Your Robot Move was a very educational class, especially to learn how to download and access programs, as well as good websites to use to begin learning Java. While this class had a lot of good information for us, a large amount of it was new information which caused a fair amount of confusion among us and others in the class. However, after going home and researching the topic a little more, it all began to make sense. The final class, which we all went to, was called What to Expect at Your First Competition presented by the Motorbolts. This was a mixture of a few things that we already knew, as well as some new information that was very helpful, such as what type of things you do when scouting, and how to present your team to the judges. After we had done all three of the classes, it was time for the game reveal! This years theme is RES-Q. It entails putting debris into goals of various heights, climbing up a steep ramp covered in bars, releasing people from a zip line, pressing a light color of your alliance, and showing and "all clear" signal at the end of the game. For more details, watch the full video here. Next, we picked up the sample pieces (debris and a person model), and headed over for the game demonstration. There were a lot of questions, but it was very useful to see it in person. Finally, we headed back and discussed our plans in the car. We are all super excited to start the FTC 2015-2016 season! Although it seems challenging, it'll be a great learning experience for everyone.
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This blog covers details about our outreach events and other events that are important to our team, and our season.
AuthorHi, we are the Rubies, FTC team 9890. To learn more about us, visit the "About Us" page Archives
April 2016
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