Mediapolis RoboDogs

This is Billy here. Stephanie wanted me to do a blog post about Johnny and I's FIRST Tech Robotics Challenge, which we have been working on since early November. The FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) is a robotics competition where you make a robot to perform a certain task and then bring it to compete with other schools. Each year, they have a different objective, and this year, we had to make a robot that could pull a ring off of a peg, then place it on a 3x3 rack of pegs. There were a bunch of different, confusing point bonuses that we could get, so I won't go into the points system at all. Also, there was a certain amount of points given if you could lift another robot.

Anybody that wants to know the "Ring It Up" game in detail, watch this video:

The Robot (at the first competition, before adjustments): Proudly sporting the HawkeyePedershaab decal...

For anyone with a curious mind, we made a steel scissor lift and used a 3-D Printer for the ring-holder at the top.

Anyway, we had two competitions this year, one on January 26th and another on February 2nd. This being the first year our school has had a robotics team, we didn't do very well in the first competition, coming in at 21st out of 24 but we did learn a lot. We made a few adjustments for our next competition, and we made it to the semi-finals in that one, a major improvement from the first. Both Johnny and I had a lot of fun building the robot and playing at the competitions, and it was definitely a good experience.

The Robot places its first ring!!

Billy, Jonathan, and the rest of the RoboDogs.