308's OCCRA 2013: Friendly Reminder...

[Chadfrom308]

Don't feed balls into the live shooter



This shot is from our GoPro mounted on our OCCRA 2013 bot. OCCRA (Oakland County Competitive Robotics Association) is an offseason league that is comprised entirely of teams in Oakland County, MI. Our human player for that match accidentally put balls down our live shooter and faced some return fire. He's alright but we think he might be a little bit more careful next time.

The game that we're playing this year is titled "GRIDLOCK", where robots score large tennis balls into a 5x5 grid on either end of the field. Robots can also score bonus goals above their opponents grid for 3x points. Endgame, robots can hang on the 30" bars for 3 points, but they are fair game to be pushed off.

OCCRA robots are designed and built entirely by students in a 6 week build season. This really allows students to learn about the design process and experience build season in a different way than FIRST. OCCRA is a critical component in the training of our team's members. OCCRA competitions are spread over the span of several weeks, and teams are encouraged to modify their robot in between.

308 designed our robot this year with 1 main design goal, recollection. Our missed shots off the grid bounce back into our large hopper, minimizing missed points. Our hopper and shooter are made of wood, reducing the cost and production time of parts. Being able to modify our robot between competitions has allowed us to make several critical changes to our robot. We rebuilt our drivetrain, increasing power by changing from 4 mini-CIMs to 4 CIMs, and also swapped out our old wheels for plaction wheels.

OCCRA match videos can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/user/308Monsters.
Our website is http://www.monsters308.org.
OCCRA's website is http://www.OCCRA.net.