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Midway! (Build season, not the battle…)

Team 980 examined the game, developed our strategies, and made key design decisions. We’ve moving into the detailed design and fabrication phase of our robot. Our students are eager to turn plans into reality. Let’s do it! In just three weeks, we plan to attend the SoCal pre-ship scrimmage at Harvey-Mudd on Sat. Feb. 19: a “shake-down” exercise for our robot.

Our meetings at the Burbank rose float barn are growing in importance. While building the 2011 robot, we’re using the 2010 robot for control system testing. We’re starting driving practice with that robot, leading to try-outs for the drive team.

We’ve kicked-off our team fund-raiser: FIRST Green LED bulbs! Members selling two cases of bulbs (60) will cover their travel expenses for FIRST Championship. We’ve set a sales goal of 980 bulbs to realize over $12K for this year. More information regarding these energy-efficient LED bulbs can be found here.

Beside building the robot, we’ve got work to do on our Chairman’s Award, designing team shirts and give-aways, and publicity.

Team 980 is kicking it into high gear!

Come join the fun!

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Welcome to Logomotion!

Team 980 had a very successful kickoff and is very excited about the 2011 game: Logomotion

Here’s the animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxujTCgQPgg

Checkout the Game Manual – password: 5Time4For3Robots2to1Dance!

We will analyze the game in detail at our next meeting Monday (6 pm) at the Burbank float barn (map). We will then start collecting ideas in our brainstorming process. To make our process effective, it’s very important for everyone to understand the game and robot rules (Sec 3 and 4).

Here’s the FIRST Design video recommended by Dave Lavery (7 min). Please check it out.

Here’s the Chief Delphi thread on brainstorming. There are also a lot of discussions regarding mini-bots, scoring, etc in CD. I encourage members to join CD and get involved in discussions.

On Monday, we will inventory our Kit-of-Parts (KOP). We must report shortages before our Wed meeting.

Also on Monday, we’ll discuss team organization. We will have these sub-teams: robot mechanical, robot controls, mini-robot, business operations, Chairman’s, web-site, imagery and marketing/fund-raising. Students can participate in more than one sub-team. We will identify student team leaders and mentors for each of those areas.

If you haven’t already done so, please register at the FIRST Student Team Information Management System. Note: parental consent required to complete registration with FIRST:

https://my.usfirst.org/stims/site.lasso

Students, please complete the NASA team entrance survey:

https://rcs.arc.nasa.gov/rcs/survey/house/entrance.php

Other business:

Here’s a link to the resource page for the FIRST e-watt LED bulb fund-raiser. We should consider this for raising travel funds for our trip to Championship (St. Louis).