January 7, 2017 FIRST FRC KICKOFF Let The Games Begin!

The PWNAGE Robotics Team meet at Genesis Automation at the crack of dawn to carpool to Illinois Institute of Technology. Here the team witnessed the FIRST FRC Game Challenge Revealed -  STEAMworks. Take a look at the video of the game reveal video below.

The ride home from the kickoff was anything but quiet. Team members talked and collaborated about the game all the way back to Genesis Automation. "There are so many nuances and different ways to score to the game" stated Nathan Kein.
The students were each given a rule book and broke out into groups. Together they read through the rule books and began working on how to create a robot that could achieve the highest ranking points by scoring the highest points in a match.

   Team member David Ellers explaining to the team a scoring strategy.

Bailiee Caldwell demonstrating to his group a scoring technique.

Luke Feeney demonstrating the weight of the robot and how a gear mechanism might work if it were centrally located. 
 The planning went into the next day as students drew up plans and presented them to the team. . There were some great plans and many overlapped. 
Below a group studies the field to see how the robot can score by picking up gears.

Nathan Kein discussing effective strategies for total points when the robot is in auto mode or teleop mod.

Dan Naperkowski presents his ideas to the team.

Axel Gallegos presenting his groups teleop advantages to the group.

Rosie Johnson and David Ellers listening to a question after her group presenation on autonomous robotic scoring possibilities.

Ally Bowgren demonstrates how the robot can move across the field picking up balls and gears to gain maximum points.

ColinOleniczak presents the physics of projecting this size wiffle ball to the group.

At the end of the two day of planning period the Team came to a collective conclusion regarding this game:

 1st priority=Gears and 

2nd priority=picking up the balls on the field