Robotics 1: All students are currently working on their programming tutorials and their first robotic challenge: Line Tracking.As the students' building and programming skills advance, they will move on to a second major robot design featuring 4-wheel drive and tank steering that will be capable of navigating its way through a maze, making its own decisions on which way to turn.
Robotics 2: The class is finished with their basic chassis and wiring and are currently testing out and debugging the whole robotic platform- drivetrain, chassis, electronics and telecontrol system. They are beginning their work with servo motors to create the robots actuator arms.
When the arms are complete, they will attempt to do a pick and place and then a tag team pick and place activity in the fastest time possible.
Advanced Engineering Design: The class has been working on the Hill Climb Challenge and will move on from there with some really advanced gearing systems to do the Tug-O-War Challenge.
Intro to Architectural Design: Our class of architectural students has been exploring the forces of tension, compression, twisting and shearing acting on a structure. We started with a newspaper bridge challenge-dealing with a tension force, moved on to arch bridges maximizing our use of compression force, and are now designing our truss bridges, dealing with all four forces. We will be trying to design bridges with the highest possible efficiency (load to weight ratio). We also designed some very efficient bridges using the West Point Bridge Designer software.
FIRST Robotics FRC Team: The FIRST Robotics FRC team is now meeting Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 5-8 pm and Saturdays 10-2pm at the UNMLA Robotics Lab (room 517, bldg. 5). We have had great community and national support with sponsors such as LANB, ASME, NASA, and JC Pennys. We have several excellent mentors helping this team of very talented LAHS students, and a really great, highly helpful parent support group. We have only a total of 6 weeks to design, build, program and pack up this 120 pound robot, which we will bring to the regional competition in Salt Lake City, UT. We will be leaving March 14 and coming back that weekend by March 18.
The team, coaches and mentors have been putting in some really long hours, with even more hours required as we approach our deadline. This is really a team effort in every sense of the word!
