Cyber Blue 234

Greater Kansas City Regional

2010-03-13T20:02:00.000-08:00

Hey ladies and gents,

Sorry it's been so long since we've last posted; the build season got really crazy very quickly! But worry not. The robot is in working condition. We've even completed our first regional!

Last week we went to the Greater Kansas City Regional. It was awesome!

Wednesday morning bright and early we shuffled onto the bus, bleary eyed and tired. Thirty five teenagers don't handle early mornings very well. But the busride was fun, as always. We shuttled into Independence, MO with plenty of time to relax and settle in for the next day which would be full of practice matches.

Thursday rolled around, and we rolled out of bed full of anticipation. It was a week one regional, so none of us knew what to expect! Were the robots going to be amazing? Was the game going to be terribly difficult? What were we going to do? All questions were answered in due time. We got off to a bit of a rough start complete with a fried digital side car (Note: Metal shavings are BAD!), but we got all the kinks worked out by the end of the day, just in time for Friday and Saturday's qualification matches.

Over all the matches went well and we ended up placing 10th and through trickle down, we became the seventh seed alliance captain. Sadly, we were knocked out in quarter finals after losing 2 of 3 matches, but all was well. We sat back and watched the subsequent matches, rooting for other alliances.

At the close of the night, we walked away with our heads held high and the Entrepreneurship award in our hands.

Pretty good regional if we do say so ourselves.

And guess what! We have another coming up this weekend! The Boilermaker Regional at Purdue University Friday and Saturday! BE THERE!

Weeks One and Two

2010-01-25T18:53:00.000-08:00

Well week three of the build season has officially started, and we are well underway!

Week one consisted of the entire team coming together for huge brain storming sessions and a break down of the game and each rule. We came up with a few different game strategies before trying to figure them out, and then our mentors came up with a really fun idea! A field trip to the balcony of our school’s gym turned into a human rendition of Breakaway complete with human robots, human towers, and human “speed bumps” as they were affectionately called. Needless to say, a few bumps had poorly defended heads and were knocked a couple times. After the students rotated around on teams, the mentors had a go at being robots, and there is nothing funnier than watching mentors try and hang. Much funnier than trying to hang ten.

Eventually we decided on a robot design. Want to know what it is? Well, if you’re local, come to our open house on February 22^nd (more details to come), and if you’re part of another team or unable to come to the open house, I suppose you shall have to wait until one of the regionals we’re attending! Boilermaker and Kansas City are the places to be, home skillet. Hope to see you there.

Week one also kicked off our weekly dinners prepared by our highly esteemed Parent Crew. Here’s a shout out to their awesome cooking skills. They are very much appreciated!

Week two commenced with each sub team breaking off to do their own thing.

Design started putting together drawings of the robot. Controls got down to the nitty gritty working with different control systems and the camera that came in the kit, and Manufacturing made mock-ups of major field pieces and continued working with physics and prototypes to see what does and does not work. And Public Relations? Well, we’re working on Chairman’s of course! Along with our other projects anyway.

So the team is quite busy, buzzing about like Killer Bees – oh wait, wrong team! Regardless of our lack of a bee-like status, we are quite busy, and week three just brings with it another seven days of craziness.

What is on the calendar? Tuesday we’re going to visit our buddies at one of the elementary schools; they’re so adorable. Wednesday, the ladies of the team are making a presentation for the Society of Women Engineers. How very SWEet!

We’ll keep you updated!!

Go Colts!
Cyber Blue 234

Hello World!

2010-01-17T11:37:00.001-08:00

Hello bloggers! Greetings from FIRST Robotics team Cyber Blue 234!

What is FIRST, you ask? Technically it’s an acronym that stands for “For inspiration and recognition of science and technology.” What is the organization? Something pretty fabulous. It was founded by Dean Kamen in ___ and the mission of the organization is to, well, inspire students to go into scientific and technological fields and to get people to recognize the merit of science and technology.

As Woodie said at kick-off, we’re all a bunch of nerds bordering on “Super-nerds.”

FIRST had fairly humble beginnings with few teams and a competition in a school gym but has expanded to include thousands of teams, over forty regional and district competitions, and a championship event at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. Every January, a new game is announced on a live broadcast to teams watching around the world, and the six week build season commences. During those six weeks, teams cut, hammer, weld, wire, and program away at their robots, their masterpieces, the ambrosia of their labors. Then the bots are packed, shipped, and the competitions begin!

One of the best things about FIRST is that it stresses “gracious professionalism” and helping those whom you are competing against. So not only is the program the football of the sports world (be you Eurpoean, South American, or just plain ol’ American, football in all forms dominates the sports world), but the founders tell us to be nice to each other! Imagine, teams who are trying to beat each other for titles, awards, and a fame of sorts being nice to each other, lending out tools to repair robots, and even sitting on the floor, teams co-mingling, to make sure that an opponent’s robot can work at a top-notch level! See, we “super-nerds” get more of a thrill out of knowing that we won against the best. And being nice always makes one feel a little squishy inside, doesn’t it?

Nicely done, Dean.

Now comes the second question. Where does Cyber Blue 234 fit into all of this?

Cyber Blue 234 started eleven years ago at Perry Meridian High School in Indianapolis, Indiana. We have had our fair share of trials and tribulations including major shifts in leadership three years in a row, and a lovely robot that was a box in a box. But we’ve also done some pretty cool things. The seven ten match, multiple successful seasons, and we have a pretty nice trophy case in the main hallway of our school. We always strive to spread the word of FIRST in our every day doings, and by “every day,” we do mean every day. We don’t only work the six weeks of the build season, but we work all year round trying to inspire people to join teams, go into the fields of science and technology, or even just to get them to ask what we do in our school’s dungeon for so many days out of the year. We go out in the community and not only get the word out, but we help people while we do it. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

I’m sure that you’re just in love, right? Wanting to know what you can do to be a part, right? Of course you are. Here’s what you do. Subscribe, follow, and stalk this blog with your very life. It will be the best click you made or make all week. We promise.

Week one of the build season is wrapping up, so look for an overview within the next day or two!