Kickoff, January 7, 2017, met (almost) everyone’s expectations — Steamworks is going to be a challenging game, even if no flying robots will be included (check out the game animation above). Here in North Carolina, most of our members were snowed in on kickoff, so we were unable to have the physical meeting we normally have to read over rules and talk, but some of our amazing mentors braved the iced over roads to take stock of what we had in our build space at Blue Ridge Tool. Later, while reading over the rules at home, we had a conference call to talk about the game and begin concept design.
We spent most of Week 1 on concept design, which involved online conversations throughout the week and several nights in front of a whiteboard. We decided that picking up gears would be our number one priority, and climbing aboard the airship would be our second. Following climbing is shooting fuel into the boiler, and picking up fuel off the ground. Our fifth and final priority is (of course) to make the robot as Steampunk’d as possible! Our design team was able to put our drive base into CAD before the end of the week, and strategy was discussed at length. Awards continued to work on Chairman’s, Woodie Flowers, and the Outreach Notebook, while mechanical began to cut pieces for the frame.
During Week 2, we’re aiming to have our drive base built and our climber, fuel intake, and gear intake prototyped. On the programming side, we plan to have the dashboard and vision code done, and to start on our autonomous code. We will continue to read through the rules and strategize while our CAD team models the new robot.
Here’s a quick video summary of our 2017 Week 1 experience!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZbXIBSgUxM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wtIDW-emdg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItYlMIBN1-M
Visit us on our social media pages, and don’t forget to tell us how your team is doing in the comments below!
Facebook – Team 2655
Instagram – @team2655
Twitter – @team2655