How are all the rookie teams doing this year?

[WakeZero]

Being apart of a rookie team myself this year, it has been an interesting change of style from being on a well established team. It took us a little bit of time to get on our feet, but now we have a moving base and are almost ready to start attaching the top half of our robot.

Anyway, how are all you other rookie teams out there? Can we expect to have some really good rookies like last year? Hope you guys are all doing well too

[Jeremy_Mc]

we move...haha

you can see most our progress here (no driving pics yet...those will be up tomorrow):
http://www.firstubergeeks.com/gallery

*jeremy

[skrussel]

We are a true rookie team - not one kid has ever participated in FIRST before! It's wonderful and horrible all at the same time.....worried about finishing, freaked out when they make a mistake, ecstatic when everything works as planned.
Emotionally exhausting, y'know?

We are learning to work as a team, which is sometimes VERY hard. Personalities clash. Some kids work really hard and long hours, others are there kind of on the sidelines, watching. Some kids discover that this whole FIRST thing is not for them. They bail on the team - too much time and too much work involved. Sometimes, resentment creeps in, usually due to individual kids' perceptions and beliefs about WHO should be doing WHAT and WHEN.

But there is nothing, repeat NOTHING that can compare to the agony and the ecstacy of being on a FIRST Robotics team.

You veteran teams all know about this, don't you?
Wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

I love my team!! Susan Krussell, teacher/coach Team 1037
The SCREAM Team

[RoboCoder]

Fortunately, we are working with a local college that has competed in FIRST before. We are a bit behind schedule, but WILL have our frame running tomorrow evening (basically, it MUST lol). group dynamics have become a very big thing and since everyone has their own separate opinion on everything, conflicts ensue

As other teams have also noticed, several students (myself included) appear to be devoting their lives to first, others work occasionally, and we have had a few members quit / not show up. It is all good though, as we are realizing many things that must be changed next year and many things that should stay the same. However, at this point we need to focus on getting THIS years robot working instead of NEXT years

Some of our groups work more efficiently than others, and some get work done faster than others. This has created some problems, especially since the drive train group seems to be the most behind schedule, which holds the rest of us up. However, it will be running tomorrow evening as I said, and we will move on. All in all, I think we are holding up quite well and look forward to competing at our local regional and then on to nationals!

[Wayne C.]

Team 1089 has their machine 3/4 built. They are doing Autonomous programming in a few hours and will discover the fun of repairing birdsnest wiring this afternoon.

They have been working daily from after school until the sun goes down. In an odd twist of fate they inherited an old bicycle shop (with tools and stuff left behind) owned by a renaissance type rogue engineer who is their main technical mentor. Suffice it to say, sprockets are no problem. Team 25 visits them to help out when we can. They are doing fine.

Fate smiles on 1089. They've come a long way from raking lawns to raise funds last fall.

WC

[Dave]

OOH OOH!!! ME SOOOOO EXCITED!!! WHEEEE-HOOOOO!!!
Pictures of my robot will soon be in the gallery, when you see them, well... bring a change of underwear.
You may remember my team from KSC 2002, at which our robot was comprised of a network of zip-ties suspending everything within our robot, and a sometimes-attached drive system... it never moved. That sucked.
The year before that, our robot was made entirely of plywood, with a hand-bent claw which made it over the ramp a grand total of once. The NASA engineers helped us rebuild our chassis in aluminum after the first day of competition, and it still wasn't too good.
At nationals, we fielded a new robot which we had constructed in the time before the wednesday after the competition, manufacturing "custom parts" which entailed everything except a new R/C.

This year, wow.... We have constructed A robot that looks like a mix between a hover MLRS and a Mammoth tank (Command and Conquer) This thing is a mover, it pushed me, an ex-noseguard, while trying to block it AND carrying two people on top of it. Once we cut 6 pounds off... we can put our arms on *sigh*

All this for a team with a bucdget of $3000, completely student run, design, engineered.. etc... is not bad. We made it in my friend's garage... no real machine tools... a teaser will be up later today... this is not the sort of robot you want to be close to, especially if your frame can't take... wait.. lemme see... a good 700 Newtons of force.. (yay physics!)
I sooo happy!
I still kinda wish we had engineering help sometimes...

[Matthew936]

We are doing great. we run, our arm runs, we aren't concerned about the hdpe surface, all we got to do is put on a cover and go win

[johnscans]

hmm. our robot moves, quite nicely at that. our secret weapon is almost finished. all we have to do after that is swiss cheese it. its gonna be over the limit. then we decorate. then we party. then we ship. then we have some ffff fff fun.

john scans

[Amanda Morrison]

Incredible! It's great to hear that all these rookies are doing so well. I hope everyone has found the appropriate resources/mentors etc.

Our team is doing fairly well, considering working space and resources.

Team 1020 is looking forward to seeing a lot of you in St. Louis!

[Redhead Jokes]

Our rookies Santa Monica and Irvine are both moving

and

we're not.

[Kit Gerhart]

After seven years with Team 45, TechnoKats, which is very well funded and since '98 has had a fantastic shop of its own, I'm now with rookie team 1062. We build in a class room where we have to put everything away every day. We have few hand tools and no power tools or machine shop. We bring our own electric drills, soldering iron, etc.

Still, things are going pretty well. It has been great for us that there was the "bolt together" drive train in the kit. While two wheel drive with castors is far from the ultimate drive setup, we were able to get something driving very quickly, a good thing when you don't have any "last year's" robots to practice with.

Now, we need to get further along with some autonomous programming and and "top half" ideas for our machine, but will be ready to roll at the Central Florida regional.

The people here have been great to work with, and the experience has been good as well. Next year, we'll be in a new school and will hopefully have a space of our own and a place to build at least part of a playing field.

[WakeZero]

Sounds great guys, remember that just getting a moving bot your rookie year is about 90% of your biggest task! I look forward to seeing all you guys at the competitions, I have a feeling there are going to be several competitive rookies like last year

[matt111]

jsut check out the robot showcse forum for 1024 news

[andy]

IF we ever finish....
you better run and hide, we're a rookie team on a mission. We got 10 ft long arms to block the ramp. Stacking arms with the ability to stack an infinate # of boxes and four 12 inch diamater pnumatic wheels that are 5 in wide. We'll have no problem w/ the HDPE. Can you say "monster truck".

well all will go well if it (in this order)
-is finished (arms etc.)
-is underweight
-can turn (those pnumatic wheels are really hard to turn)

thats all for now see you at the ATL regional
-Andy

[Vincent Chan]

Andy, your bot sounds like a beast. I look forward to seeing it in a month and a week.

As our mentor put it, I'm "breathing, eating, and sleeping this stuff." Quite frankly, I'm darn near obsessed. I'm living for FIRST at this point.

The team is about half kids that work sometimes and kids that work all the time, with a few kids that don't work at all. It's been kind of hard to recruit kids who'll work all the time, and building has been slightly slow, but we're getting close. Funding is a problem, and I think we're running on a negative budget right now.

However, it's all VERY fun stuff, and it's been quite an experience.

Currently, our drivetrain is very near running, though I'm doubtful about our arms. Hopefully we'll be testing by the end of this week, and if not, by Saturday night.

I guess for a team of complete rookies and a team captain with one year's experience, we aren't doing too bad.

Looking forward to the Peachtree Regional (GA).