Update #3 (Week of September 23)

Outreach and power outages and rookie prep, oh my-- it’s been a crazy week for robotics. Here’s what’s been going on!

What’s up with outreach?

    We had three great outreach events this week. On Wednesday at lunch, we had Club Rush. We got a bunch of sign ups from interested students, and they’ll all be coming to next Wednesday’s meeting. Then on Thursday, we had Science Night at the Menlo Park Public Library, which was a blast-- the kids all loved seeing our paper airplane shooter, as well as last season’s robot at work! Finally, our last outreach event for the week was a quick lunchtime presentation for our new rookies, where we brought them up to date on our meeting schedule and how the team operates.

    Next week, we have another lunch meeting on Wednesday. Just like Friday’s meeting, we’ll chat a little bit about the team. The only other event we have on the calendar right now is 8th Grade Parent Info Night on October 22. We’ll be driving the robot around and answering questions from any 8th grade parents who come by. Don’t forget to sign up on the website at Student Volunteer Sign-Ups!

What was that power outage?

    The power went out at M-A on Wednesday afternoon-- thanks to all the parents who came to retrieve their kids on such short notice! That isn’t exactly unprecedented-- when it gets hot, the school’s power does tend to go out, and this time we had no power anywhere in the room. Luckily, it went back on shortly after 7pm, and everyone who stayed managed to make some great progress in preparing for the rookie game and loading up the robot for Thursday’s Science Night. 

What have we accomplished this week?

    And now we get to the rookie prep! Most of our subteams this week were occupied in creating tutorials that they’ll be able to use starting next Saturday, when we begin rotating groups of rookies through different stations where they’ll learn foundational skills. Here’s a breakdown of what we’ve done this week.

• CAD

  • Created presentation to guide rookies through training

  • Fully finished CAD for rookie game mascot

• Mechanical

  • Solidified training plans

  • Finished building chassis for rookie game

• Programming

  • Worked on setting up new computers

  • Began work on coding rookie game mascot

• Electrical

  • Pulled together parts for rookie chassis

• Business

  • Began business plan

  • Worked on business how-tos

What will we be doing next week?

    In a word (or two), rookie training! On Wednesday, we plan to welcome our rookies with a potluck (food signups are here!), introduce our rookie game, and split the rookies into loose groups to begin prototyping. From there, we’ll begin our rotations! Each rookie group will spend one meeting with each subteam learning the basics. It’s all veteran hands on deck for the coming weeks as we get all our new members up to date.

For more on the Rookie Game and our goals for the fall season, check out our past posts. 

We'll be back next week with an update on how our rookies are settling in!