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2009 Season
As Stuypulse neared its tenth anniversary, we prepared once more for the challenge given to us. After a season of hard work and perseverance, our robot, Michael1, was born. This powerful machine was quick, efficient, and best of all, had some serious personality: glaring eyes and a grinning mouth just waiting to acquire moon rocks. In our ninth year, we were truly up to "Lunacy".
In order to deal with the primary challenge of maneuvering in the low-friction field made out of of Regolith, the team decided early on that a four wheel drive with two drive trains would work well on the field. Next was the design for the shooter. After two short weeks with various prototypes offered, a design was made which included conveyor belts, dumpers and shooters. And it was magnificent. The shooter was ranked #6 out of all the FRC teams in the world for offensive power. Overall, the whole process of designing went by quickly. By week 3, the entire robot was prototyped in Autodesk Inventor.
While the engineers were working on Micheal1, the programmers were busy on the equally important task of writing code for the various electronic additions to the robot, including the new cRIO and the camera. So while the the robot was being made, the programmers were right beside them, even adding on electronics to a test robot as well.
Despite the stress due to long school days and intense finals, the members of the team still managed to find time to stay after school to work on the robot until almost midnight.
After all that work, the team found itself with an extra two weeks until they had to ship the robot. Using their extra time wisely, the team tweaked and optimized all aspects of the robot, including improvements in camera tracking, reinforcing our frame for more durability, and adding a spare ramp from our '07 robot, Tom.