High School Robot Team Essay

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In my sophomore year, I joined the Anacortes High School (AHS) FIRST robotics team. When I first started I was a part of the Chassis subsystem, and the next year I became the subsystem leader. With the new leadership, the year turned out to be one of the best years the AHS team has ever had. The highlight of the year was at the Pacific Northwest District Championships, but it didn’t come without some major speed bumps. That year I was the Chassis Subsystem’s leader, and my subsystem built a six wheel chassis, powered by four motors and two gear boxes. It was belt driven, so all six wheels were powered. The rest of the chassis was built from solid aluminum, welded together, and assembled with quarter-inch bolts. We built a very standard chassis …show more content…

There was still routine maintenance that needed to be done and there was one catastrophic event. At the Pacific Northwest District Championships, we had one of our most outstanding successes of the year. The qualification rounds were not our best, but we were picked by the fifth of eight alliances. During Quarterfinals of the elimination rounds, we were competing against the fourth alliance to move on to the semifinals when disaster struck. We were in an alliance of three strong scoring robots, and it was decided that it would be best not to have three robots fighting for the same scoring elements on one side of the field. Our robot was chosen to play defense, and we were happy to do it. We played on the closer side of the field to slow down the enemy alliances. At the end of the match, we needed to cross the field to park the robot for extra points, and that's when our robot started to veer to the left. On the last weekend of build season, we experienced a similar problem. We knew that after long-term use, one of the smaller gears in the gearboxes could break and we had to replace the gears with fresh ones. For the competitions, we had a spare gearbox ready for a quick change, just in case we needed it. But in the lab, it had taken a team of ten people three hours to replace two

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