TEAM 4201 (Feb. 2014) | Page 24

Team 4201 is part of the newer high school of Da Vinci Science High School. Due to its few years in operation, it has been difficult to work with other high school FRC teams. However, FRC team 330 the Beach Bots have helped out team 4201 in tremendous ways since our rookie year.

During our rookie year, the Beach Bots was the team that came by to give us some of their spare parts from previous year robots. They also gave us some basic guidance on the construction and wiring of our robot. Whenever we had any problems regarding our robot, they were always there to help us out. The year during our first competition, we were extremely fortunate to be next to the Beach Bots in the pit area. Whenever a part of our robot was damaged during a match, someone from their team would come over to offer a lending hand.

Our mentors always kept in contact with each other and discussed robot problems and how we could solve them. This year at the Inland Empire Regional, one of the mentors from team 330 visited us and asked us how we were doing. When we had our programming problems, Beach Bots was there to offer guidance on what could be wrong with the code. Team 4201 has no specialized programming mentors, so it was great to receive this assistance. The

programming mentors, so it was great to receive this assistance. The mentor from the Beach Bots shared with us a PowerPoint presentation on how we could approach PID Loops and Controls. He also gave us information on how we can minimize our disconnecting problems with Labview by timing out the last while loop.

The Vitruvian Bots have been able to recently work with FRC team 330 the Beach Bots and team 294 Beach City Robotics after our experience at the Inland Empire Regional. On March 16, 2014, the programming and drive team visited the facilities of the Beach Bots where the Beach City Robotics team went to as well. The members of team 4201 were able to get plenty of practice that would not be able to be achieved within Da Vinci Science. The facility contained a very similar game field that is set up at competition as the drive teams were set up on opposite ends like in the arena which was a huge advantage for the team 4201 to practice with. The human player for our team also had catching practice. She learned what to do in incidents such as if the ball goes over her head and when it it best to go for the ball or not. The drive team also learned more about maneuvering since Beach Cities was playing defense as rest of us were offense.

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