Servo - January 2012

Looking Backward 2012 — 1989

the build faded and we didn’t get around to testing as many ideas as we had imagined.

We think the shortcomings of Protobot stem in large part from the fact that the project was unstructured – we had just come off of a super-structured FIRST season, but with Protobot we had no game to build for, no teams to compete against. Once again, the smaller scale competitions like the VRC and FTC come to the rescue. The timing of events like the FTC and the VRC is conducive to promoting year-round enthusiasm in your robotics team.

The FTC kicks off in September and concludes with a championship in December. The VRC happens in the spring, with the championship in April. The same qualities that make these events appealing to teams strapped for cash or confidence also make them an excellent way to maintain enthusiasm in the FRC off-season. The FIRST Robotics Competition is a pretty exhausting endeavor – Team 1079 had its share of all-nighters, especially as the merciless shipping deadline drew near.

Even though every season and every regional left us brimming with ideas for next year, we didn’t have the stamina to jump into building another robot that outweighed some of our team members. Even with a small team, though, we were able to compete in the FRC at the beginning of the year and one of the early FIRST VEX Challenges later on. The timing, scale, and structure of the FVC was the perfect way to keep the enthusiasm as high as it was in the thick of the regional competition, and teams today can keep the enthusiasm flowing with both the FIRST Tech Challenge and the VEX Robotics Competition.

MO SHOWING OFF AT THE JPL OPEN HOUSE.

Looking Forward: 2012 — An Even Brighter Future

Being a part of FIRST was certainly the most memorable highlight of our high school days, and several years down the road we can really see the impact that the competition has had on our educational and career paths. The alumni of Team 1079 have gone on to populate engineering schools all across the country, like the Jacobs School at UCSD, the Pratt School at Duke University, and Cal Maritime. This, in turn, has lead to careers ranging from a Naval ship’s engineer to patent lawyer. Everywhere Team 1079 went, the practical experience gained by working on a real project was invaluable. Even in engineering school — where students are supposed to be learning the skills to prepare them for real world industry — the practical experience of FIRST was unmatched.