It was time to warm the students up for the FIRST Robotics FRC build season. The team decided a fun way to prepare would be to have teams build trebuchets to throw a tennis ball.
Trebuchet building would let the students get some practice researching, designing, planning materials and building. It was quick, and was also something that could be opened up to non-students involved with the program; everyone from the team's sponsor companies to the school's custodial staff great guys, they have keys that get everywhere in the building, allow the students to transform the lunchroom into a robot test drive track and perhaps most importantly are tolerant of crazy robotics students tearing around the building at odd hours (insider info you may not be aware of; robots get built at night).
The company I work for is a sponsor of Team 2220, and I mentor the programming subteam (robots need code to go). So a small contingent from my company decided to play along in the trebuchet challenge. The attached video shows the small pyramid design we implemented really does work. While the custodial staff loaded 45 pounds of counterweight to clean up the field with their 43 foot throw, our little 5 pound power pyramid chucked the tennis ball over 14 feet. So I'd say our "foot per pound" ratio was looking pretty good.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment