Our first meeting after the scrimmage was on Tuesday, November 13, 2018. We spent the first part of our meeting discussing what happened at the scrimmage, and how we could improve upon our robot. Later in the meeting, we proceeded to make design changes to our robots based on what we saw at the competitions.
Our first meeting after the Pittsburgh Area scrimmage was on Tuesday, November 13th. We spent the first part of our meeting discussing what happened at the scrimmage, and how we could improve upon our robot. Later in the meeting, we proceeded to make design changes to our robots based on what we saw at the competitions.
On our last meeting before Thanksgiving Break, all of the teams got to work on the improved designs for their robots. We fixed mechanisms on our robots and started building new ones. We also worked on our engineering notebooks, and decided to reorganize our slightly messy team boxes.
On our first two meetings after Thanksgiving break, we kept on working on perfecting the mechanisms on our robot. We also got a chance to practice driving and to attach our spools onto our linear slides. We ended the meetings by working on and finishing our presentation and our engineering notebooks.
We had a Sunday meeting at NREC on December 2, 2018. Many people were not able to come to the meeting, but the people who could were able to work efficiently. We had a chance to drive on the field, which helped us recognize what parts of our robot we needed to work on.
Our last two meetings before the Johnstown Qualifier were extremely busy. We kept on tightening everything that we could on our robot, and practiced driving on the practice field. Driving was vital to the points scored, because if the attachments did not function, pushing around minerals on the field was our only option.Team 9820 Hypatia stayed for overtime on Thursday, because they had to finish their robot. After our last two meetings, we felt more confident in our robot.
On Saturday, December 8, we attended the Pitt Johnstown Qualifier which started at 7:45am and concluded at 5:30pm. For many of the girls, their days started at 5:00am, when they were getting ready for a 2 hour long car ride to Johnstown, PA. The competition was filled with a large number of teams who were extremely experienced. Many of us were amazed at how much time and effort they put into their robots and their presentation for the judges. We made our finishing touches to our robot and sorted out our presentation for the judges. After judging, we attended the opening ceremony and started competing in matches. Lovelace 9981 placed in 17th place, Hopper 9821 placed in 22nd place, and Hypatia 9820 placed in 23rd place. We had an immense amount of fun at the competition and were sometimes even surprised by our robot and its functions. We’d like to thank Girls of Steel FRC member, Anna J., for her help at the competition.
After the qualifier we attended the Girls of Steel all hands meeting on December 11th and 9820 and 9821 showcased their robots before we held our debrief meeting.
On Saturday, December 15th we brought our robots to the Girls of Steel annual holiday party for the demonstrations. Unfortunately, we all spent the time at the party working on our robots and we didn’t do formal demos after all.
On December 16th several FTC girls volunteered at the Girls of Steel Girl Scouts workshops at CMU. They worked with Daisy and Brownie Girl Scouts to help the younger girls earn robotics badges.
Our next meeting of the new year is Tuesday, January 8th once we return to school from winter break. Time to get ready for the Pittsburgh Qualifier at Upper St Clair High School on January 19th.