Author: <span>David Stout</span>

On Saturday November 13, six team members attended the unveiling of the Ferris wheel at the Long Beach Aquarium. Thanks to Coach Singer, we met many of the staff and had a personal tour of the entire aquarium. The staff were amazed at how well it was built and ready for the birds to enjoy.

Office A is changing! The old mill has been moved, and the old location cleaned up, sanded and clear-coated in anticipation of the new mill arriving on Tuesday. The windows and walls have been cleaned and the paint given a new fresh coat. Bennett, Adam and Devansh took charge of making this happen. 

After months of COVID related delays, we finally completed the installation of our new tool  rack that our team captain Miro Garrett built as his Eagle Scout project. The rack holds our drills and other hand tools, along with the custom built table below for additional storage. Looks great, works well and helps us keep office C organized.

Thanks to the Culver City Education Foundation, we are getting a new milling machine. Delivery is scheduled for next week, and we have office A all ready to go. The old mill will move to the back benchtop, which the team built this past Wednesday. The new mill will replace the old one, so soon we will have 2!

At our team meetings on Mondays and Wednesday after school, we are working on several projects to teach build skills in preparation for our competition season. The bird feeder Ferris Wheel project for the Long Beach Aquarium is making good progress, with the prototype completed and metal final version underway. The drive base project is coming along where team members are assembling a kit drive base. Programming working on Java coding skills. Coming up are the Rose Parade robot float project and driver’s station build projects.   

We had our first robotics meeting in 17 months yesterday, with returning team members and around a dozen new faces. Following a quick review of what the team is up to, members sorted through the electronics and supply cabinets, the cave and back offices. We got a good sense of what we have to work with and organized some of the supplies and tools. We also took apart the last remnants of the 2019 field pieces.

FIRST is in a challenging position regarding regionals and COVID. We continue to look at options for the team (diversification of projects) and keeping an eye on competition news. Latest as of today is we have an extra month to decide on where to sign up for our first competition.

Team meeting days are Mondays and Wednesday aftyer school until around 5 PM.
Coach Stout

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Robotics activities will resume soon at CCHS, this time with both a CTE Robotics class on Tu/Th and our club activities on Monday & Wednesday. If you are interested in the club and Team 702 activities, check back soon and come to our team meetings on Monday after school in Room 91. Students are welcome to be part of one or both activities. The class starts Sept 7th and requires sign-up through CCHS. 

First meeting will be Wednesday Aug 25 after school in room 91

FIRST Robotics FRC season is coming up with kickoff on January 9th. There will be 3 competitions that are mostly possible with remote-only work. Our Captain Nia Yick leads the team again this year with the following projects and subteam leaders:

FRC Game Design: Eric Andrade leads this group to design a new FRC competition game. The Game Design Challenge will allow registered teams to design their own FIRST Robotics Competition game using real-world, virtual, or hybrid design elements, and compete for judged awards. Winning concepts will be considered for use in future official games.

Innovation Challenge: Lead by Vasilisa Ponomarenko. In the Innovation Challenge presented by Qualcomm, registered teams will identify a real-world problem related to this season’s theme, FIRST^® GAME CHANGERS^SM powered by Star Wars: Force for Change, design a solution, build a business model, and deliver a pitch to compete with other FIRST Robotics Competition teams for judged awards. This new challenge will have an advancement track, culminating in the Global Innovation Awards, a multi-day experience where students showcase their innovations, participate in workshops and receive mentorship from experts, and compete for awards.

Robot reboot: Lead by Avneat Ghotra INFINITE RECHARGE^SM at Home brings components of events to you in two ways:

• Teams show off what their robots and drivers can do in a skills challenge based on the 2020 INFINITE RECHARGE game. Scores are posted, and teams virtually compete against each other for the Skills Challenge Awards
• Teams illustrate their robot’s technical qualities by sharing information with judges remotely in competition for traditional robot-based awards. Teams can participate with or without access to their robot.