Newbie Blog

We’re fast approaching the end of build season,  and both excitement and tempers are running high. Our robot is looking more and more like a an actual robot and less and less like a random conglomeration of metal pieces and electrical parts as the hours drag on.

I’m still rather confused by all the scientific jargon, but it’s beginning to make more sense. Over the past week, I’ve come in daily after track practice and worked on an assortment of odd jobs: preparing metal cylinders for use in the robot, helping Mrs. Glickman with travel plans, finalizing our Chairman’s Award nomination, and sorting hundreds of bolts and nuts. Today, I worked for several hours on the bumpers. I refastened them with the correct bolts and cut and attached pool noodles.

Well it’s been a while since we had an update but there were some finer points to figure out, such as how to add a post after the first one, but we got it. Lately everyone has been working on different parts of the Robot so I keep wandering around trying to learn how to program, work mechanics, and write a convincing sponsor letter, all at the same time. We now have a sample chassis with all sorts of wires and boxes and a light that keeps blinking – it’s an RSL (robot signal life) and it’s required by FIRST so that everyone always knows whether the Robot is on or not. Robert has also been experimenting with programing with an X-box controller…at least that’s what he says, he might just be playing games…Members have also been making a kicking device to get the soccer ball over the ramp, it works quite well, actually one of our mentors almost got kicked in the head on a test kick. Robotics is still confusing to me and I often have to fight to urge to feel useless, but lately we have also been working extremely hard on this website and that’s something that even I can help with, though it is surprising how complicated it is to get every member’s phone number and e-mail (yes Curtis I’m talking about you). But the member pages are in the brainstorming stage and we hope to be able to start interviewing our members soon. There are also T-shirts, buttons, and sponsor letters – it seems like every single store or organization that sells something related to building is a potential sponsor to be contacted, but hey schools are underfunded. The T-shirts are turning out to be quite the adventure too, though we have determined that they will be green. And we have some design ideas too, its just a matter of getting them printed…In general everyone is busy building and learning, we have settled into a routine of sorts and everyone is in high spirits.  We just received the metal that will be used to build our real chassis meaning that soon we will begin the actual building process!

An old adage claims that the only stupid question is an unasked one. After a little more than four months in robotics, Meghan and I can definitively tell you that that is as far from the truth as Pluto is from the sun. But have no fear — we’ll ask them all for you.

Our first day in robotics could be referred to as a learning experience, or possibly the beginning of a lame joke. Two literary junior girls walked into a physics classroom, expecting the meager beginnings of a high school math and science education to help us succeed among a group of primarily male veterans. After all, we figured, we were just building a robot. Little kids do it with Legos all the time, right?

Wrong. Immediately, the team set about dissembling last year’s robot, a monstrous conglomeration of metal and wires called the Black Hole. I was eager to help, until the friend responsible for bringing us to Marcos de Niza’s nerdiest club explained that the robot could take your arm off if it got stuck. We had to play with cannibalistic things larger than us?!?! Now, a membership seemed as dangerous as walking into Polyphemus’s cave. (Polyphemus, for those of you who know more science than ancient literature, is the one-eyed monster who tries to eat Odysseus).

Still, I reasoned, if lion tamers could walk into a ring of starved beasts, if firefighters could dive into burning buildings, if millions of clerks could survive Black Friday, then I could master a heap of metal and cables. So, I turned to a rack with enough screwdrivers to make Home Depot jealous, ready to take my part in dismantling the monster. But….they weren’t all screwdrivers!

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is the first of the many stupid questions I promised you. I could recognize one hammer, and the rest were obviously screwdrivers, right? I mean, they had a handle and a stick of metal sticking out of it; what else could they be? Roughly twenty minutes later, I learned two things:first, not every tool is a hammer or a screwdriver(check our glossary for a full list), and second, I will never make it as a mechanic. As a matter of fact, by the end of that first meeting, I didn’t think I would ever make it as an Orbinaut. They were all so smart, and I…well, I was looking forward to a career writing occasional articles about the engineers who created amazing things, not creating them myself.

I was all ready to leave and never return, confident that Robotics wasn’t for me, when Mrs. Stoll explained that we needed web managers and writers. My ears perked up at this — as the online editor of our school newspaper, I was sure that I could handle that. Maybe Meghan and I had found our niche, a place where we could help the team, rather than hinder it. And so, Team 2449 was able to reach out its enticing tendrils and draw in another pair of unsuspecting, but willing, initiates.