At the end of the competition we made 5 flys in to the bin. Almost two more, the were close calls. We made a total of 176 points! That put us in 8th place, one place from breaking to semifinals. We beat all of the round rock teams as well.

The robot fit in the 24" by 24" by 24" cube. It also weighed 12.7 lbs, half of the max weight of 24lbs.

Our robot, the clapper is now complete. We may do some modifications to make it more efficient, but overall seems to work fine,

We are making the prongs for the claw.

Here is Mason attaching the arm, a necessary component for any complete robot.

Right away we started making the wheels, here Evan is cutting them with a bandsaw after our mentor, Chris, showed us how to use it. Thanks Chris!

Brainstorming commenced. Ideas presented included miniature Star Destroyer, a harpoon, and cable tray for an arm. These ideas were completely ridiculous and thrown out. We came to the conclusion of designing a robot with a basic arm and counter weight, with rear wheel drive and a duct tape netting as a claw, was the best idea.

Evan, Jacob, Mason traveled with Mr. McCarroll traveled to Anderson High School to attend Best Competition Kick-off to retrieve materials and get overall contest objective.

We watched the Best Competition preview video and began speculating the task, constraints, and criteria of the competition. Additionally, we went over many of the basics of robot design.

This year is all about picking things up and putting them into assorted bins.