This year the robotics team will be partnering with the MESA group and Mr. Dien to compete in the JPL invention challenge. More news soon.
Meetings days are
Monday: Team meeting
Wednesday: JPL build
Friday: Demobot build and/or JPL build
Also the team will be participating in the Fleet Week robotics demonstration event, Monday Sept 3rd, from 8-5.
Team 702 unexpectedly was invited to the inaugural Aerospace Valley regional, in Lancaster. We had a great time and although our 5-8 win-loss record doesn’t show it, the team did great. We were on the field for practice on Thursday at the first available slot and spent most of the day on the field testing out our auto code. With only 36 teams present, we had 13 matches for qualifying rounds (that’s a lot, we had only 8 at LA last year). That meant very short times between matches, so sometimes we went from the field right back into queuing for our next match. Happy to report that we were on the field competing for every one of our 13 matches. That’s a testament to our team and robot construction.
Regional competitions are more than just having a robot on the field. Our publicity team prepared a chairman’s award video, essay and interview for review. Our scouting team lead by Diana had to juggle team member availability. Our drive team had to keep up with (thankfully minor) robot failures. Our lead programmer had to contend with optimizing the code for competition. Our parent and mentor support group kept us us in the right place at the right time, and fed. Also a hat’s off to the AV team who put on this event, it was well done and we appreciated the food, seating and organizational efforts that made this en enjoyable experience.
Awards!?! The Bagel Bytes Team 702 has existed for 18 years now, and has won 3 awards in the past 17 years. This year we won 2 awards, which was rather unexpected since we won the same Innovation in Control award twice this year. It is very unusual for FIRST to award the same award twice, and particularly impressive since we won this from judges who are aerospace engineers who build automated drones. We could not have done this without the support of our mentors Scott and Wade, our lead programmer Keoni, plus the support of everyone on the team who built, supported and made possible the ability to compete this season. Our parents also made this possible with meals, money and signed field trip forms on short notice, thanks everyone.
The robot is built and bagged! Now it is competition time. This year we will be attending the LA Regional competition at the LA Fairplex in Pomona. Team members going as part of the competition group already have their contracts and school paperwork in hand. All team members and their families are encouraged to attend, especially on Saturday. Parents please RSVP for the post-season party Saturday night.
Work on the robot continues as we practice putting boxes on the scale and lightening the arm.
We have all our field pieces built, and a prototype robot working! On Saturday we placed a box on our scale with the robot and can reach any height necessary for the competition. Thanks to our team members and mentors, we have a working robot, field pieces to practice with, tools we need and carpet to match the competition floor. A big thank you to all our parents who have kept up fed the past 2 weeks.
The team is busy building robot prototypes and field pieces. On Saturday we completed our biggest field piece, a large full sized scale. We will use this to practice placing power cubes with our soon to be built robot.
Team 702 had their kickoff party in the robotics classroom on Saturday, where all the team members, mentors and parents got to see our 2018 FIRST robotics challenges. We had over 70 people attending and appreciate the parents putting together lunch for everyone and cleaning up the room for us. We are now busily making a mess, trying out ideas and drawing up designs.
For the last 16 years, Team 702 has been dedicated to the idea of creating a program where students from all walks of life, regardless of gender or social status, could come together and work with each other to build, create and improve not just robots, but relationships, life skills, and themselves as well. This year, Team 702 “The Bagel Bytes” has begun undergoing some major changes to it’s overall structure in hopes of strengthening that essential part of its core.
Well, in the grand scheme of things, not much. Team 702 is still devoted to it’s main message (as stated above) and competing in the FIRST Robotics Competition. Team 702 is still committed to reaching out to improve it’s community through volunteering at local elementary schools to advocate for STEM in all fields of study, and at all ages. Team 702 is still devoted to helping out fellow FRC teams through software and hardware collaborations such as the Open Source Pixy Vision Tracking System. So, when looking at the team and it’s goals for the coming years, not much has really changed. If anything, Team 702 is hoping to build itself into an even more active member of the STEM community in and around the Southern California area.
Team 702 is looking to change how things are currently within it’s team through restructuring how it operates internally. As such, there are a lot of changes happening that are not necessarily obvious at a glance, one of which is the creation of this new website that is aiming to be a more informational, modern, and usable website for members of it’s team and members of the community looking to learn more about “The Bagel Bytes”. Don’t worry, the same team that caught on fire and continued the play is still here and driven to become even better. Oh, and the bowling shirts are here to stay too (we know how much you love them).
Build season has started!
Team members, please be sure to check the calendar on the website to keep up to date with all of the scheduled meetings and events going on. Team 702 will be attending the Los Angeles FRC Regional in 2018 on March 15th-17th!
We have begun cataloging our past robots into informational bio pages! You can find them under the “Past Robots” tab under “Team History”
