Last Friday, a group of Crusaderbots visited the Autodesk offices in Lake Oswego, Oregon for Autodesk’s Valentine’s Day FIRST Beer Bust. Erin Feebeck, Zuhair Parvez, and Ian Walters presented Air Charlie to interested Autodesk employees. Crusaderbots mentor and Autodesk Oregon Regional FIRST coordinator Janna Spicer urged employees to volunteer at the upcoming regional.
Ian Walters shows off Air Charlie to a group of Autodesk employees
In an eleventh hour miracle, the Crusaderbots have been officially confirmed for going to the Seattle Regional. Through grants from Autodesk and Platt Electric as well as generous donations, the Crusaderbots raised enough money to attend the regional. The Seattle regional is at the CenturyLink Event Center from March 22nd to March 24th.
CAO Anna Calkins with the Platt Electric Grant
The Crusaderbots give a big thank you to all of our sponsors!
Sleepy-eyed Crusaderbots gathered with over thirty other FIRST Robotics Teams at Evergreen High School for the annual FIRST Robotics Competition Kickoff. Appearances by Stephen Colbert, will.i.am, Muhtar Kent, and Dean Kamen built up to the revealing of this year’s game, Rebound Rumble.
Like previous years, the game is played on a 27 by 54 foot field. Teams have to score on the array of hoops located at each end of the field. To get across the field, teams have to either cross the 4 inch tall steel barrier or drive over the balanced bridges located across the barrier. Teams receive extra points if they end the game balanced on one of the bridges, either by themselves, with a teammate, or even a competitor.
Stay tuned to the Build Blogs as the Crusaderbots continue through the Build Season!
Last Saturday, the Crusaderbots competed at Catlin Gable’s annual BunnyBot competition. This year’s game challenged teams to move bunnies scattered throughout the field to their alliance’s side of the field. Each team could also have a Nerf Gun to shoot opponents. Alliances got 3 points for each bunny on their side and lost a point for each time they were tagged by a Nerf dart.
Q, the Crusaderbots’s entry for the competition, featured a rotating beater bar on the front of the robot that could be used to capture bunnies quickly and move them. Featuring a six-wheel drive, Q could move speed across the field to get bunnies and bring them back.
Q, our BunnyBot
Like previous BunnyBots, Q was the culmination of rookie training. Rookie members of the teams designed the robot and did a lot of the manufacturing. At the competition, rookies took turns driving their robot under the guidance of their driving coach, Kyle Kern.
Big thanks to everyone who came and supported us and all the other teams at the BunnyBot!
Last Saturday, the Crusaderbot girls took control at the Girls Generation competition at Catlin Gable. For a whole day, the boys weren’t allowed to touch the robot at all. The girls learned how to work on and drive the robot.
Anna Calkins, Shivani Negi, Lizzy Zhao, Erin Feebeck, Amita Kashyap, Anika Raghuvanshi, and Elaine Wan represented the Crusaderbots as they competed against other robotics teams from Oregon and Washington in a modified version of Logomotion. To learn more about Girls Generation, check out the Oregon FIRST website.
Good job girls!
Left-to-Right: Amita Kashyap, Lizzy Zhao, Anna Calkins, Shivani Negi, Anika Raghuvanshi, and Erin Feebeck
The new Crusaderbots website has launched. It brings everything from the old design as well as a smattering of new features like dedicated build blogs and up to date calendar information.
