Author: David Brinza

FRC Team 980 fought hard in its second competition, the Los Angeles Regional, held in the Long Beach Sports Arena on March 21 -23.

We finished in 18th position out of 65 teams, with a record of 5 wins and 3 losses. Our catapult was successful in scoring Frisbees in autonomous mode and during tele-operated play. We were an alternate robot for the elimination rounds, and remained “on-deck” through the semi-finals and finals of the competition.

Emma, our team captain, won a Dean’s List Finalist Award! Team 980 won the Xerox Creativity award for our novel catapult approach to scoring and defending. Our lead mentor, David Brinza, earned the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award for the Los Angeles Regional.

Team 980 wrapped up a successful 2013 FRC Ultimate Ascent season and is now working towards next year!

FRC Team 980 competed in its first 2013 regional competition in San Diego on March 7 – 9.

The robot operated in every match, with our team compiling a record of 4 wins and 6 losses against a strong field. Our team captain, Emma, shown driving the robot here, sang the national anthem for the crowd on Saturday morning. We had a great time and learned a lot at our first event.

We took our “mobility platform” to the pre-ship scrimmage at Harvey-Mudd College on Sunday, Feb 17. Three students had the opportunity to drive the robot on a competition field with other teams. Here’s a picture of our functioning drive base with our red bumpers:

Team 980 is in the home stretch of build season with just two days until we stop work on our robot!

Team 980 members are working hard, building our 2013 competition robot!

We are meeting Mon-Thurs from 6 pm to 9 pm and Sat from 10 am to 4 pm at 907 Flower St in Glendale.

Here is a CAD image of our robot climbing up the leg of a pyramid:

Team members are prototyping a frisbee catapult, laying-out electronics and pneumatics, assembling the chassis and drive train, and designing our control system. As an example, we’re deciding how to approach the pyramid leg when ready to climb: can we use the camera or should we design mechanical guides to properly align the robot?

We plan to take our robot to the scrimmage at Harvey-Mudd on Sun. Feb 17 (just 2-1/2 weeks from now).

Team 980 greeted the 2013 FRC Season with a Kickoff Event at our new build site.

The new game is called Ultimate Ascent! Here’s the game animation:

This year’s game has some really tough challenges! Teams can score by having the robots toss frisbees into goals on the far end of the field. Teams can also score by having the robot climb a “monkey-bar” pyramid, with three levels of difficulty.

Team 980 will analyze the game, develop our strategy and brainstorm during the first week.

Go, ThunderBots!