By Sammy Nagy
For most TPA students and staff, the coming of January seemed only to signify the end of a relaxing and low-stress winter break, a tune which, for students like those of the TPA FRC Robotics team, resonated all the sweeter. For only a few days after the joyful and merry new year, the 2015 season’s challenge for FIRST Robotics was revealed, sparking the start of a six-week challenge designed to tax the intellectual capabilities of even the most technically minded of students and volunteer mentors.
This year’s challenge, known officially as “Recycle Rush,” pits two teams of three robots against each other, the objective requiring the teams to make as many separate stacks of tote and recycling bins as possible within two and a half minutes. While this may indeed seem simple enough, at least as compared to last year’s challenge of tossing exercise balls over eight-foot trusses, in practice this stacking is quite difficult, requiring a robot that can effectively create stacks of crates and recycling bins easily towering above the six-and-a-half foot robot height limit while simultaneously managing to balance them on a semi-slippery surface.
The tackling and overcoming of these obstacles required several complete overhauls to the design of the robot, including a complete reenvisioning and reconstruction of the robot’s base and wheel section, a standard design left relatively untouched by the team over the past two years. The new section, a U shaped base radically different in shape yet identical in performance, was assembled in order to accommodate an ingenious belt and screw lifting system produced to allow for the lifting and carrying of large stacks of bins internally and securely, and was made from scratch by members of the mechanical and computer aided design sub teams fast enough to be completed two weeks before deadline.
Beyond this, the team also functioned well even in the face of some of the most tedious of tasks, such as the complete reassembly of the new base in order for it to accommodate more open internal space, demonstrating its resilience even with the introduction of many experienced yet still relatively new members and proving the ability of the TPA Robotics team yet again.