Our second week of build season is coming to a close; we have been working hard. Our design is almost finalized, and fabrication is gearing up for a flurry of activity. Marketing is working on a new spirit shirt design (it involves dye!) and Daniel is working diligently on the team shirt design. Programming started to write code tonight and electrical is starting to draw up plans for the robot’s wiring. We have even started preliminary driver training for competition. Everyone is very excited about this year’s challenge and the product that we are working on. We are looking forward to the next four weeks of craziness and fun!

-Emily

Marketing Intern

It’s been a couple months, school is out, and most of us are finally unwound from build season. Most of us. Thankfully, though, we have enough rational and sane members of our team left to appear at some events during the summer!

First of all, we will be appearing at the AG Centennial Block Party on July 10th. We’ll be there from 4-6pm, and you’ll be able to find us infront of Lemos Feed and Pet Supply in the Arroyo Grande Village. We will have this year’s robot, Murphy on show, but due to spacing issues, we will be actually running last year’s robot, Phoenix.

The second event we will be appearing at will be the “AG Valley Car Sho” (Yes, that’s how they spell it), which will be on July 30th.

Daniel, Still an Unpaid Intern

Travel: Eagle Robotics is at it again! And this time, we are off to UC Davis near Sacramento compete in our second regional!

Practice Matches: Our robot was shipped via Jim to this regional as a result of our unique back-to-back competitions, and our pit crew jumped right on it making much needed modifications and improvements to the robot’s programming and machinery.

Changes Include:

- Improved Gripper speed.

- Minibot Deployment System was made more consistent.

- Arm Gearbox speed was changed to bettering.

Qualification Matches: Our drivers and robot continue to improve, as a matter of fact, our robot was one of the only scoring robots available near the beginning of the day and our alliances benefited as a result. Autonomous code was created and fine-tuned which allowed consistent placing of the Ubertube at the beginning of the match which made us well equipped for Finals the next day.

Elimination Matches: Our robot went got off on a strong start, and won all of the 10 seeding matches. Moving on to eliminations, we paired up with Space Cookies and The Wild Hats. Our victory streak ground to a halt on our second semifinal match and marked the end of our competition season.

Awards: On a happy note, we came home with the Xerox Creativity Award given to us for our innovative minibot with magnet embedded wheels.

Christopher Site Admin

As mentioned in previous posts, Eagle Robotics was at the Exploration Station in Grover Beach today (December 11th), demonstrating the capabilities of the 2010 robot, Phoenix. Also being displayed were Lego NXT robots, and sample Lab-View (The software used to program Phoenix) programs that generated noises that were annoying very, very, annoying for anybody standing nearby.

We’d like to say thanks to everyone who came out and especially to the Exploration Station for having us. We all had fun, and we hope everyone else who showed up did too.

AGHS Eagle robotics is proud to be part of The Grover Beach Exploration Station’s Expand the Experience. From 12:00-2:00 on December 11th. The team will be at the Exploration Station with last year’s robot, Phoenix, along with some Lego Mindstorms robots, and simple computer programs. Robotics team members will talk about the work (Programming, Designing, Fabrication, and Marketing) that goes into creating a robot for competition.

This hands-on event will be aimed at younger children (Under age 10), but anybody is welcome to come. For even more information, look at the description on the Exploration Station’s website.

Daniel Marketing Lackey

Saturday, November 13th was a day of flying gourds. At ten am sharp, a team of Pumpkineers from Orcutt High School brought their trebuchet to the back of Arroyo Grande High School for the annual Pumpkin Chunkin’ competition. They were the standing champions from last year’s competition, so it was a shock to everyone when on the second throw, their magnificent trebuchet snapped, making it virtually useless. Before long, though, members from our own Robotics team has whipped up a–smaller–pumpkin launcher made from surgical tubing and duct tape. Their seat-of-the-pants creation went on to beat the previous team’s trebuchet. Also at the event was a KSBY News camera as well as a private film producer from Fat Chick Productions (her videos may be found on YouTube).

In other news, AGHS Robotics is going to be scheduled for a visit to the Grover Beach Exploration Station in about three weeks. This is geared to under-10′s, so we hope to see some shining faces when the time comes.

Anna Marketing

Today, after school, Eagle Robotics hosted an informational meeting for new, incoming team members. Each veteran team member gave a statement about their experience on the team. We saw what appeared to be a well-balanced group of members. Team members are required to bring their parents/gaudians along with them to the Monday meeting at 7:00PM on October 4. We encourage people who were not present at the Wendsday meeting to come to the required meeting on Monday.

Christopher Site Admin