Yeah. It’s been that long. It’s that time of year when I get busy with another project and don’t have much time for blogging. It’s FIRST Robotics time.

I’ve been an advisor to a local High School team for six years, since my son was on the team. He graduated and is off in college, but I’m still on the team.

Every year, the students are given a new game to play and have six weeks to build a new robot to play it. We’re in the middle of that six weeks now and are well into the design and building of a robot that plays a game to be known as Breakaway. I’d try to explain the game, but here’s a video that does it better:

So, we’re building bumps and tunnels. Towers and kickers and trying to figure out how to build the perfect robot to master this game. Last year, we did pretty well, going all the way to the final field in the National – International, really – Championships in Atlanta. We won our local regional and did very well in another in Philadelphia. The challenge is to live up to our hard-earned reputation as a team and do it again. Continue Reading…