This year, robotics team 8193, the New Lothrop Steel Stingers had our most successful season since our rookie year. After months of stressful design, prototyping, building, and coding, we finally thought they were competition ready. There were countless hours put into different ideas and their prototypes, hundreds of mistakes and bugs that needed fixed or redone, and dozens of late nights. But despite it all, we powered through the exhaustion, the hard work, and the frustration. Our build team spent weeks debating the different pros and cons of every design, before finally settling on one. But, of course, there were still several changes to be made along the way. As different ideas formed, and RI3D teams posted their bots, our design changed and evolved, eventually turning into our final design, prototype, and build. Our coder worked around the clock to connect everything on the robot, despite the many difficulties and blocks he was faced with. Our outreach and fundraising expert spent time brainstorming many different required activities with the team - which led to our pie sale and plenty of different visits to different teams near us.
Our final robot is called Captain Stan - his namesake being the capstan drive used to score coral onto the second and third levels during gameplay. After eight weeks of build season, we headed into our competitions confident for the competition season ahead.