Monday 2/10- Viki P.
Touchdown on Talon Robotics!
Back from our Superbowl weekend, Talon is ready to dive into a Monday! There were business meetings to attend, a robot to troubleshoot, and field elements to be made. To start our “meeting sandwich” as Audrey, one of our leads, calls it, the Media Subteam led by Medha G. gave a firm yet gentle reminder of accountability. These lovely blog posts are made by our very own members and we hope to deliver to you, our readers, the best overview of Room! Speaking of giving the readers what they want, Media discussed all the ways we can cover our Alabama Regional Competition so our friends and family back home can stay informed and entertained (for updates on the Rocket City Regional in Alabama, you can also follow us on social media, where we will be giving frequent updates- scroll to the bottom of the page for info). Not a moment later, our Inclusivity Subteam began with some revisions to our FIRST Ladies submission, an organization dedicated to building a community of girls in robotics, and filling our awesome sauce box with our team members’ contributions! Lastly, Marketing followed up on emails to sponsors all around our community.
Back in the room, Riley L., one of our engineering captains, worked hard on troubleshooting and programming our robot. Space-grade robots take lots of trial and error and we are so thankful for our dedicated captains. A handful of underclassmen were deconstructing and constructing a half reef for the best game practice possible. Safety glasses were utilized with all of the power tools and CNC machines going on. To end the very productive afternoon, Maddie, our wonderful mentor, brought pasta and salad for the very hungry robotics kids. It was delicious and our Monday was completed!
Tuesday 2/11- Juan Diego C.
Ferris the crab can be a hat
Today, many of our hard-working students are creating multiple projects in the room. Naren and Krishay, some of our freshmen are currently assembling our half reef for our practice field, while Kiley and Gabe, some sophomores on our team, are working on making new pipes for the reef, which will be combined with the previous project. In addition, we have kept on a yearly tradition on Talon- giving our robot batteries fun names! This year, we named them after Mountain Dew Flavors, with names such as Baja Blast or Code Read. These batteries were assembled today. Also, one of our engineering captains has been hard at work testing our robot!
We also had our weekly team meeting tonight, where we discussed upcoming events and travel. From March 11 to 15, we will be traveling to Rocket City for regionals in Alabama and as of current we have decided on the team members who are traveling to this event. On Sunday, February 9th, we had our Driver test, our drive team consists of Nolan as our driver, Riley as the drive coach, Timothy as the operator/human player, Luke as our second human player, and Brooke-Lynn as our technician.
Our upcoming events include the DLR group, which is going to present to our students what their company does with hands-on activities. A large new announcement, our captains Vonnie and Timothy were selected for the dean’s list, an award which sheds light on members of our team who go above and beyond in the hard work they put into our team. At Scouting and Strategy, we discussed the result of our driver test, pre-scouting spreadsheets, final checks on our pit scouting form, and progress checks on the scouting app. Today at our fundraising meeting we discussed signing up for our Krispy Kreme pick-up and what that will look like and our upcoming fundraisers. During the Awards meeting, we worked on revising our impact essay and the executive summary, which are due on Thursday. Overall, it was an extremely productive day!
One of our team members wearing crochet ferris is a hat
Wednesday 2/12- Sindhura G.
Today, Talon Robotics handed out boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts at the South and North entrances of Eden Prairie High School to our wonderful buyers. Our members had to wrap up to stay warm in the -4 degree weather outside! We also ordered additional boxes that we sold at the pickup site to oncoming teachers and students. During this, the programming subteam reviewed code that they had worked on for the past weekend. This code helped with drivetrain field navigation and lining up our scoring mechanism with the reef to score. After this meeting, the awards subteam worked hard to finish the IMPACT Executive Summaries, essay, and video and submit them. Yayy!
Our team members gearing up to sell boxes of donuts in the cold!
Thursday 2/13- Rishi J.
Meet the Captain: Timothy M., Engineering Captain
As usual, we had a break from open room on Thursday to catch up on schoolwork and rest. Therefore, for the blog post we will meet the captain: Timothy!
Could you introduce yourself? “I’m Timothy Moore, I am a junior, and I am one of the engineering captains on the team.”
What do you think of this year’s game?”
“This year’s game is one of the most interesting ones I’ve seen, I think it has been captivating and interesting to design and build around.” Timothy says, as he begins dreaming of the new Krakens we’ll be buying this year.
What are your deepest and darkest secrets, Timothy?
“Programming is not that bad. It’s pretty interesting and very useful. I just choose not to participate in it. Except if they don’t shower. Nolan [Talon’s programming lead] showers though so we’re good. Honestly, that applies to anyone even not in programming” Timothy asks everyone to please shower.
What is the funniest thing that has happened this season?
“Josie made Ferris [a crocheted Rust (a coding language) mascot], I adopted him, and then someone threw him across the room.”
What’s the best way to use algae outside of it’s intended purpose?
“You tie a rope onto it from behind a boat and then go tubing by holding onto the algae as hard as possible while the boat driver tries to rip you around!” To that I say, don’t try this at home, but it sounds very fun.
Favorite flavor of Mt. Dew? “Code Red.”
Now, this year we named our robot batteries after Mountain Dew flavors, including one by the name of Code Red, your favorite flavor. Would you eat that battery? “No, because that’s dangerous.” He’s right kids, don’t eat batteries
When we travel to Rocket City Regional in Alabama in a few weeks, what are you most excited for outside of the competition? “Spaaaaaace.” For context, we are planning on visiting the Nasa Museum. So yeah, spaaaaaace.
What is your best piece of advice?
“Don’t be afraid to be honest.”
Now, we’ll ask more of the team about Timothy. To start off, we’ll ask Will, our Awards lead about him.
Hey Will, what do you think of Timothy?
“I think he’s a fire build captain.”
Do you think Timothy would eat our batteries?
“Uh, no I don’t think so. Even though they are named after Mountain Dew this year, he would be like, ‘Oh! Code Red! This kinda tastes like battery acid, not gonna lie.’” Eating batteries is dangerous, so don’t eat them. Timothy wouldn’t do it, be like Timothy.
What do you think makes Timothy a good captain?
“He makes us learn things and build self-confidence.”
Next up is Donovan, our Safety and Organization mentor.
What is the funniest thing that Timothy has ever done?
“Taste blue Loctite. He did not like it.” He did not like it, he had to spit it out. Definitely DO NOT eat Loctite.
What do you think his favorite food is?
“Oreos.” We have since gotten confirmation that it is in fact not Oreos.
Finally, we’ll ask Ally, the Scouting and Strategy lead, about Timothy.
What do you think Timothy’s favorite tool is?
“Timothy’s favorite tool is the angle grinder, probably because of how useful it is for various tasks and the amount of sparks it produces.”
What do you think makes Timothy a good captain?
“Timothy is a great captain because of how dedicated he is to the team and how much time he spends working on the robot and with our team.”
Timothy is a great captain. Thank you for interviewing with us Timothy! Next week, we will talk to another one of our captains!
Friday 2/14- Brooke-lynn B.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Valentine’s Day was another busy day for our programming team. They focused on developing autos, or code for the autonomous (unmanned period of the game) and robot navigation. Robot navigation is important so our robot can find its location on the field. The robot can then find its next location on the field by moving relative to its current position. Another part of the robot that helps with navigation is our vision subsystem. This consists of our limelights, which scan for April tags, which are QR code-like pictures scattered across the field indicating important parts of the field, such as the reef, or the barge in the middle of the field. While programmers focused on the robot, the Scouting and Strategy subteam continued pre-scouting. They gathered information on other teams’ robots by searching through their websites and social media to see what they had posted about their robots and teams. Finally, Talon’s media team started 3D-printing an assortment of fun beads to distribute on friendship bracelets in the pits during our competitions.
Eden Prairie Robotics also had another big success with one of our FTC teams, Team 22349, Nuclear Knights, qualifying for Minnesota State FTC. They attended the first day of their two-day competition on Friday. They had an excellent judge’s presentation after a successful robot inspection and they played a few practice matches. Overall, the Nuclear Knights had a great start to their competition.
The FTC team Nuclear Knights at FTC State!
Saturday 2/15- Naren B.
INCREDIBLE job, Nuclear Knights!
As the week, was about to end, things were exciting as we got our robot ready for driver’s practice and started working on our robot bumpers. Some of our team members were also working on making a mechanism for our robot to be able to hang on a cage during the game. We also watched the Week Zero tournament in Eagan, and the FTC state tournament while we were working. As one of our teams made it to state, and also into our division’s semifinals, everyone who was in the room was very tense. Unfortunately, we got eliminated in the Semifinals, but the FTC team had a good run. Go Nuclear Knights!!! You had a wonderful FTC season and we are all VERY proud of you!
Sunday 2/16- Ally L.
Waffles, Pancakes, and French Toast
Sunday began with work on the programming and automation of our robot. The programmers were working on making sure our elevator could reliably reach each set point in the programming, so that our robot could score on each branch. We continues with more programming work with the motors that drive our elevator, or the arm that helps us score. We have named it Pancakes and Waffles. We also worked some with the motor that runs our coral manipulator, or the thing that allows us to pick up our game piece this year called Coral (short PVC pipes) which we named French Toast.
At another table on Sunday, we worked on preparing Lego kits for students at Prairie View, our nearby elementary school. Prairie View has days with scheduled Discovery Groups, where kids can explore things they might be interested in, like robotics! Talon is helping out with this by preparing STEM Lego kits so that elementary schoolers can have fun learning about different STEM concepts. Hopefully, the kids will enjoy using the Lego kits we prepared today, and get to learn something new about STEM!
Near the end of the open room, one of our new mentors stopped by with her dog, Rain! The programmers got a break from their work on odometry and pose estimation and got to pet this very cute dog. Rain loved seeing our team’s build space but did not like the large game piece, algae. Sadly, she was also scared of our robot. We are so thankful to have a new mentor to help out and that we get to pet this wonderful dog!
Finally, after Open Room today, we had a Shark Tank team builder, where team members presented ideas for products in front of a panel of Sharks (both people and stuffed animals), who pretended to invest in their products for shares of their business. Some funny products presented were cockroach killer robots of any size and variety to deal with your pest problems, little alien guys, and the Rememberinator, presented by Dr. Doofenshmirtz. Thank you so much for your participation and lovely ideas to those who were there!
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