2021 Season
The Games
This past year has been all out of wack. With majority of people on home lockdown and learning/working from home First decided to push through this pandemic and have a competition. Though this competition wouldn't be like any of the competitions from the past. This year we have Infinite Recharge at home with consists of 3 parts, Skills challenges, Games Design, and Innovation.
Skills
The skill challenges are similar what what the normal competitions were. There were 3 teleop challenges and 2 Auto challenges. Within those 5 challenges there were multiple driving and maneuvering challenges for both teleop and Auto. For Teleop there was a challenge where the robot has to pick up a specific number of power cells.
Game Design
For the Game Design challenge, First Challenged teams to create a game mode that could be featured in a future First Competition. So teams had to configure a layout, a rule set, and how the game would play
Innovation
First teams were challenge with solving a problem presented due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Teams had to innovate a solution that would help their community by benefiting their mental or Physical health in a positive light. Teams had to create a business model, a well constructed pitch, and the solution must involve technology somewhere
Our Team's Season
The 2021 season was different, this year our team had reshuffle things around. Due to the closing of schools we could no longer meet in person so we took to google meet to communicate and plan out our season. We spilt our team into 3 groups, Skills, Games Design, and Innovation. As well as the Chairman's challenge.
Skills
The skills group was made of the coding/systems team and their job was to make sure that the inside mind of our bot is functional and that our auto code was updated and functional for our new season. We also thought of new ways to code and use the robot like how we want to switch from Timeline-Based programming to Command-Based programming which is going to improve the robot's performance. We are also working on a team library and documentation
Game Design
The Games Design team's goal was to craft a new potential game for a FRC. After days of brainstorming the team decided on Pirate themed game by the of First Shipwreck. The overall game went as this, There are alliances of the normal 3 and 4 ships total, 2 galleons and 2 sloops. Each alliance starts on either side of the field on one of the ships. The Galleons are fitted with 4 cannons and 2 slots for pouches. The goal of the game is to steal the other alliances's gold pouches and bring them back to your team's chest. Bots can also fill their cannons with cannon balls(powercells) that can be shot out at the end. As the game ends teams must hang onto the anchors hanging from each alliances galleons or get onto one of the decks of the ships
Innovation
The innovation challenge was very different from the other two challenges, for this one our team thought to outsource information from our community and not just from within the team so we sent out a form for people to fill out asking questions like what could help you get out and about while stuck at home and what kind of things would be fun to do with friends. After collecting this information the team went and brainstormed what could work based off of what the people thought of. In the end the team designed an app that acted like a Geocache app where you can challenge your friends to go to a certain location and do an activity.
Awards
Our team was awarded the Chairman's Award which is one of the most prestigious awards in all of FRC. The award is given to teams in and out of the pits and for going beyond just the team but to the entire community.
Over the past year our team has helped out all over our community. At the start of the pandemic the team focused on making masks and printing out parts for face shields, and with the lockdown our team turned to virtual meetings to introduce new team members and bring back returning members. We also have been working on capturing our team's history. The team also worked on empathy and took classes from FIRST on inclusion, equity, and diversity. At the same time the team branched out and created two new parts of our team, business and art. The art portion of the team created a storybook about robotics that are read in elementary schools during story time.
CHAIRMANS AWARD WINNER!!!!
Award Ceremony
Created by First Chesapeake
Timestamp: 55:15
Our Video
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