We have made it! Six long weeks of building a robot to compeate in this years FIRST challange. The last day of this build season got me curious about other team members favorite part of this years build season. So I asked them, "What was your favorite part of build season?"

Courtney Cole: "Getting to see my friends every day"

Connor Cole: "Being able to test and drive the robot"

Joey Skura: "The end"

Patrick Degenhardt: "The building"

Bill Cole (mentor): "My favorite part of build season was yesterday: Watching our robot balance on the bridge!"

Alex Bratchie: "I don't know, Scott"

Abi Fuller: "The lack of sleep"

Elizabeth Dunn: "The team dinners at Ledo's!"

Matt Wesloh: "getting to work on the robot."

Cody Cassell: "When we build it"

Preston Fuller: "Febuary 21st"

Mikey Walton: "Ledo's!"

Tom Milnes (mentor): "Seeing the test board video of Patrick controlling the pistons"

Sam Young: "Getting the machined parts"

So, What was your favorate part of this years build season?

A few days ago, I accompanied my sister to a programming meeting at the Cole's house. I was greeted quite enthusiastically by a tiny ball of fuzz and cuteness. Zadie, a six year old Shi-tzu (no more than six inches tall), is greatly loved by the Robo-Lions. She can be found in the arms of a team member at nearly any moment of any meeting at the Cole's. She encourages members to wake up early with hopes of hugging a puppy (and, of course, finishing the robot!). No matter then amount of strenuous work and countless hours put into this challenge, a brown and white puppy can make everyone's day pleasant! She will always be a favorite of the Robo-Lions!

Today marks the end of week five, and the Robo-Lions are working hard on finishing our robot. Currently,our build team is finishing the manipulator and working on our pnematics. Our programming team will be running our ball hopper in a few minutes and we have our fingers crossed that it will work perfectly. Our Wiring team is working with our CAD geniuses to make a computer model of our wiring system before we put in on the robot.

As a team ritual, every year a person on our team has painted a lion onto our robot. This year we hope to continue that legacy by having an execeptional artist on our team, Hyrum, paint the lion.

As stated above the programming team just tested the ball hopper. Crossing our fingers must have helped because once again our programming team has pulled through and delivered exceptional code. Now we have to work on our aiming mechanism and shooting mechanism. If all goes smoothly we will have everything done by the middle of next week, but as a two year veteran of FIRST robotics we all know that things do not always go as planned.

Our first competition will be the Cheasapeake regional in Baltimore, Maryland. Last year at this competition we made it into the quarter finals. Last year we also won the Engeneering Inspiration Award at the New Jersy regional, which allowed us to go to Championships in St.Louis. This year we are going to the Cheasapeake regional and the Cincinnati regional, we hope to win some award at these regional and hopefully go to Championships again.

If using the Kinect to perform bizarre operations with our robot is technological progress, then our work has surely brought us dozens of leaps forward towards the great technological singularity. We have successfully activated a piston with Kinect, driven our robot with Kinect, and attached the head of a now-decapitated toy koala to the aforementioned piston and used to torment small children (with Kinect, of course).

After a flurry of meetings, we have (a) dissected how to play the game, (b) brainstormed a list of requirements and constraints for our robot, (c) drafted a rough design of the ball capture system, (d) begun prototyping a possible drive system, and (e) made friends with our team captain's dog. Not that (e) was difficult, mind you. Hopefully 'Jack' does not have any diseases transferable by petting, or the entire team may be at risk.

The ball capture system is very similar to the one we built in 2009; basically it's the same thing times six. It has yet to be studied if that means its 'awesome' factor will be correspondingly increased.

The drive system is... peculiar. To navigate over the giant bump dividing the field, two solutions have been proposed: a piston system that will raise the robot over the bump, and a large skid plate to slide the robot over. An anti-gravity system, though it would undoubtedly net us the Nobel Prize and its one million dollar payout, was struck down as infeasible.