4488SHOCKWAVE

Shockwave Wins at 2015 Girls Generation

Shockwave did great this year in winning at the Girls' Generation Competition. We competed our way to our highest winning percentage of all of the competitions during the year's season. The crew captained the first seed, remained in the winning alliance for the second year in a row, and was completely undefeated. Working with our partners; Flaming Chickens (1540), Phred (847), and Hotwire (2990), we won our way to the top.

2015 Challenge - Recycle Rush

This year, the game is called "Recycle Rush" and is centered around promoting enviromentally-postitive practices. There are two alliances of three robots, who mainly stay in their own 26 foot by 27 foot zones (the field itself is 54 by 27 feet long). Each robot may start anywhere in its alliance's area, except for the Auto Zone, which is in-between the Staging Zone and the Landfill Zone in the middle of the field.

In autonomous mode, the robots may lift special yellow totes, which are marked with reflective tape, and regular, gray totes and place them into the Auto Zone's Scoring Platforms. If all three robots are in the Auto Zone at the end of the match, then the alliance gains more points.

Once teleoperated mode begins, each alliance may stack the totes into the Scoring Platforms in the Auto Zone. In addition, recycling bins may be scored by stacking them on top of at least two totes. Pool noodles, which are labeled as "litter", may be placed inside scored recycling bins or thrown onto a Scoring Platform. Also, "Coopertition Points" may be earned by both alliances working together to stack the special yellow totes in the middle of the playing field on a platform. If four are stacked, the points are doubled.

Meanwhile, human players may hand litter and totes to robots on their alliance or toss their litter over to the other alliance's zone (robots can't toss litter to the opposing alliance). Any litter that is left in an alliance's zone and not on a Scoring Platform is considered to be unprocessed and grants some points per piece to the opposing alliance.

Solarflare

2014-15 Mock Build Week - "Hungry Homer"

Each year, Shockwave hosts a practice season for a week for our students to learn and experience a small taste of the busy Build Season. Our dedicated Head Mentor create a simple challenge, complete with autonomous and teleoperated modes and with bonus objectives, and then task the team to design and construct a robot which could perform the given goals.

On November 15, the eager students finally received their assignment. "Hungry Homer" challenges students to fabricate an armless machine that could lift a small innertube, representing a donut, and place it into a board with two slots, which would be Homer's mouth.

Swiftly, the team began construction. They shared ideas and designs in meetings, voted on the best concepts, and split into their groups to successfully make their piece of the bot. Prototypes were created to demonstrate some of the plans as the students decided how to best form their invention.

It was a difficult week, with two and a half hours meetings on weekdays and a long seven hour one on Saturday the 22nd, but Shockwave's creation was ready. We then felt success as the robot performed well!

Click Here to see the initial challenge presented on November 15, 2014.