This past week marked the end of Waterford Robotics 2014 build season. As a team, we did not quite reach our goals of having a fully functional robot to bag on the stop build day. This might sound like panic time for Team 3245; however, there is a 45-pound withholding allowance. This means we are able to bring 45 pounds worth of material that we can work on up until the Utah regional.

Over the last two weeks the Veterans and the Rookies split, to work on separate robots, for this year's game Aerial Assist. The Veterans and the Rookies both took the approach of a pneumatic punch into a wheeled shooter. The Rookies decided to go with a nonadjustable shooter while the veterans are working on a manually adjustable shooter with the goal of motorizing it later. Originally the two robots were destined to face off against each other, but version 2 of the competition rules stated that the two teams would play with each other to achieve a maximum amount of points on Monday, February 17. The competition rules had strict deadlines that both the Rookies and Veterans failed to complete. The Rookies job was to pass robot inspection by February 14; however, to complete this inspection a Bill of Materials has to be completed. This was not completed therefor a valuable lesson was learned on deadlines. The Veterans too missed several deadlines on February 17th. Too date we have not scored a point with our competition robot. However, the Rookie Robot was able to truss toss and almost score with motors only running at 70%. We are confident over that over the next few weeks we will develop a successful competition wheeled shooter.

This past Saturday, Waterford was able to invite all Utah teams to come and play in the Assembly Hall. This was a great opportunity for us too see the progress of the other teams. The main theme was the Catapult and the Kicker. Every team that came had some version of a catapult or a kicker. Even though we have not completely perfected our wheeled shooter we are excited at its uniqueness and we think eventually it will perform better than the other mechanisms. Looking ahead, we will be working very hard over the next three weeks to finish our wheeled shooter and floor loader. The trick will be to keep them less than 45 pounds.

Daniel Matthews