First steamworks was our third season. After the last season, we had a severe lack students. That’s why we tried to find more people before the new season started. In the end we got a total of 7 new students and 2 new mentors. This was a huge step for us. As a relatively small FRC team, it’s important for us to find new members. There will always be people leaving, so we always need to be on the lookout for fresh blood. All the new students ensured that we could grow as a team, which is why we immediately started teaching our students the needed skills.
One of our new mentors was studying media and as we see time and time again, it proved how good it is for our team to have people from several different studies. The photos he made were absolutely amazing. He also worked together with our team captain to make a documentary about our team. Although we aren’t sure when it will be finished, if we get a chance to finish it at all. But it is definitely something we will be looking into again in the future.
During the season, we tried to give our new members as much experience as possible. Sadly, we didn’t finish the robot before the regional. But we improvised by playing defense, while trying to continue working on our climbing system. About halfway through the competition we finished it, so we managed to climb successfully in a number of matches.
Our robot used a mecanum drive. When designing the robot, we focused on delivering gears and climbing the rope. We also had some ideas for a shooter, but as we didn’t finish our robot in time, we never really got to it. Using a good mecanum drive was definitely a big step for us. It wasn’t perfect yet, but we could control it quite well.
At the competition we also had our Wheel of First, which got us lots of attention. The wheel of First is a original idea of our team which promotes contact and fun between different teams. To participate you spin the wheel and you get a small task and a team number. You have to go to that team and ask them to do the task with you. We have varying task, but some memorable ones are singing a song and drawing their robot. Completing a task would earn you our button or a cookie, as well as a point for your team. We made a trophy for the team with the most points. The Wheel was very popular from the start and in the end the number one team almost had a hundred points.
We also made progress on several other parts of the team. One of the most important things was the amount of sponsors we found. After a strong season, we were confident in the future of our team.