FIRST Robotics – 2012 Season Kickoff

Video on a Game that was revealed in the First Robotics Season 2012

It’s a very exciting day in the FIRST Robotics calendar, the day the game is revealed and the six week build season starts.

It looks like a great game this year.  I am particularly fond of the bonus points for balancing with an opposition robot at the end of the game.

If you’ve got high school kids, they really ought to be taking a serious look at joining a FIRST team like MAX1071 here at Wolcott High School.

Just two years after building robots, Iona is now building satelites with NASA’s Chief Technologist!

:: Justin ::

By |2012-01-07T14:20:06-05:00January 7th, 2012|Categories: Robotics|Tags: |2 Comments
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A sporting weekend

It’s been a while since we had a sporting recap, so here goes:

Soccer :: Heart of Midlothian

Screenshot of Scottish Premiere League Table

A look at the league table really tells you all that you need to know.  This has been a great season for Hearts.  The welcoming home to Tynecastle of Jim Jeffries as Manager along with cult hero Rudi Skacel and now prodigal son Andy Webster is making Hearts very comfortable in 3rd.  Add to that a big burly center forward in Kevin Kyle, a dynamic young winger in David Templeton, and a goalkeeper who has saved all three penalties he has faced this year adn it’s a good time to be a […]

By |2011-02-19T21:28:25-05:00February 19th, 2011|Categories: Personal|Tags: , , |1 Comment
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Wolcott is where the robots are at

This weekend was the 3rd Annual Where Is Wolcott Invitational (or WIWI) as we like to call it.  This is where Team MAX, build the game field from this years FIRST Robotics game in the Wolcott High School gym and runs a day long competition.

3rd annual event of 'Where is Wolcott Invitational'3rd annual event of 'Where is Wolcott Invitational'

This was our biggest competition ever with 23 teams.  Three of them were particularly cool.  We had one team made up of mentors from any of the competing teams who wanted a shot at driving a robot (I found out quite how difficult it was).  We […]

By |2010-06-07T14:25:02-05:00June 7th, 2010|Categories: Robotics|Tags: , , |0 Comments
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A Great Day of Robotics in New Jersey

 

Yesterday, we started early (5:30am at the high school) and took a small, crack team down to Bridgewater, New Jersey to compete in their invitational the Bridgewater-Raritan Battle Royale.

In many ways the point of the trip was to bring back the field for our tournament next week, but not only did we compete, we won!

100529 Tam MAX in New Jersey (31)100529 Tam MAX in New Jersey (34)100529 Tam MAX in New Jersey (26)100529 Tam MAX in New Jersey (8)100529 Tam MAX in New Jersey (10)

By |2010-06-06T04:06:35-05:00June 6th, 2010|Categories: Robotics|Tags: , , |0 Comments
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Where is Wolcott?

Where Is Wolcott Invitational logo

on June 5th Team MAX 1071 will be hosting the Where Is Wolcott Invitational.  This is an opportunity for FIRST Robotics to come and compete at this year’s game Breakaway in a slightly more relaxed environment.

We have a great time hosting the event and we add some fun twists.

One of these is having a “Mentor Team”.  Team GUS is very generously letting old fogies use their spare robots and mentors from any team can sign up to take on the students.  If you are interested, sign up here.

If you’ve never been to a robotics even, then you […]

By |2010-04-30T11:37:04-05:00April 30th, 2010|Categories: Robotics|Tags: , |2 Comments
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Robots in the News

Image of an article from the Waterbury Republican-American

A nice article from the Waterbury Republican-American.  You can click on the images for full size versions.  Seeing Kyle, Matt and Kevin (all freshmen) there working on the robots reminds me how soccer helps kids get smarter.  The only member of the drive team I hadn’t coached came from out of town,  and a lot of the rest of the team has been through the ranks of one soccer team or another of mine! (isn’t it cool what you can take credit for!) :-)

:: Justin ::

By |2010-04-04T15:23:12-05:00April 4th, 2010|Categories: Robotics|Tags: , |2 Comments
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FIRST Robotics :: Day 2

It was a wonderfully successful morning.  Team MAX 1071 won 2 matches and tied 1 to finish qualification ranked 11 out of 58 teams.  With that we ended being captain of the 8th seeded alliance which is very impressive but leaves you playing the top seeded alliance in the first round of elimination. (breaking news: we lost that first game – best of 3 – 14-10 with a valiant effort.

Not only did the team have to play well, but they had to represent themselves in a series of interviews.

And… we won an additional award, the “bling-y-est bot award”!

More photos of the fun:

By |2010-04-03T13:47:28-05:00April 3rd, 2010|Categories: Uncategorized|Tags: , |0 Comments
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Still more robotics, end of day one.

Day one ended with a couple of nice victories to leave Team Max heading into the final qualification matches and hopefully the elimination rounds tomorrow with things looking good.

On top of that, their various interviews and presentations seemed to go well, and Iona was on the 6 o’clock news.

Here’s some of the action (click on the images to watch videos):

The Team MAX drive team
The Team MAX drive team is introduced

A fine performance in autonomous mode.
A fine performance in autonomous mode.

By |2010-04-02T18:34:10-05:00April 2nd, 2010|Categories: Robotics|Tags: , |0 Comments
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