Build Weeks 1-3

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Over the past three weeks team 486 has been working diligently on their robot for this year’s competition, Aerial Assist. So far the Build team has assembled the drive train and is working on perfecting the shooter. Shooting a two feet diameter ball 8 feet in the air is certainly a  daunting challenge. Meanwhile, the programmers are working on camera integration, allowing the robot to see the goal and shoot the ball automatically, as well as working on other tasks such as game strategy and pneumatic operation. 

While the Engineering Branch has been hard at work on the robot, the Public Relations Branch has continued to build and maintain the team’s website and finished designing the team’s spirit wear and making a plethora buttons. The Community Outreach team has organized several successful bake sales to raise money for the Positronic Panther’s Relay for Life team.

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The PR group, with addition to a few other stray team members, assisted in the re-photo-shooting of our robots! We thought it was prime-time to redo them, and re-do them we did! Using a simple set up that consisted purely of a fancy black curtain and a bit of elbow grease and heavy lifting, we were able to obtain some nice pictures while having a ton of fun!

The website team- a specific subdivision of the PR group – has maintained slow but steady progress on the graphics. As the graphics team were busy with team banners, letterheads, and buttons, the website team had to buck up and use their scrawny (but still existent!) knowledge of Photoshop to design more headers. Originally, we had considered using a black-and-white photograph, but finally decided on the colored version. We thought it added some pizzazz to our website. More webpages to come! 

So far, this season has been productive, and we hope that this carries over into success in our upcoming competitions.