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The Coach’s Journal – Summer 2004 Coming off the excitement of the Atlanta Invitational tournament, we registered our team for the upcoming season on May 3rd at our first opportunity – FLL team 0029. Our team’s summer activity has been focused around special projects. In our first meeting (May 23rd), we focused on brainstorming for ideas. Some of our ideas included : Web site (for the SYRA and for our team) New clutch-differential design to improve straight travel for our core robot Multi-robot remote control for competition (i.e., RoboSumo) EDU-Robotics and LEGO mockups of table robot EDU-Robotics tutorials Full-size robotic table design (Avatar robot) Scrapbook for team – for our activities and accomplishments Attending BattleCry @ WPI - after-season FRC competition on June 19th On-screen presentations for new season, to replace tri-folds Rotating photo display, with LEGO base Presentation for new team coaches, and mentoring for new teams On Sunday, June 13th, the Mende family hosted an “Atlanta Reunion” barbeque for the combined team that had been at the International tournament in April. The whole group and their families had a great time, with Coach Mende distributing his fantastic video DVD of the Atlanta competition, and Coach Pilvines distributing a photo DVD of the accumulated season photographs. A beautifully sunny day, great food and great company! On Friday, June 18th, our team was graciously hosted at the “BattleCry @ WPI” after-season FRC competition by coach Michael Norton of the Blackstone Valley Intimidators (#61) team. They had previously offered to show us the FRC competition in Atlanta, but we could not match schedules then. In Worcester, they showed us the ropes and gave us much insight into the building of an FRC robot, as well as how the 2004 competition worked. Several of our guys got to take the field with the Intimidators that evening, and got a first-hand experience of the senior league competition. They are a great bunch of folks, and we appreciate their Gracious Professionalism toward an FLL team! We look forward to the Blackstone regional FLL tournament in November 2004! On Sunday, June 20th, a delegation from our team visited the “Flea @ MIT”, and picked up some tools and surplus components for our robotics projects. We received the EDU Robotics kit on June 30th. On Friday, July 9th, we had a Stargate premiere night, with the team meeting to plan and work with the EDU Robotics tutorials, and watch the season premieres of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate – Atlantis. A great time was had by all! Throughout the summer, the team worked on various projects, as a full group, and in sub-groups. Specs for the websites, implementing BattleBricks remote control, implementing RCX-based multi-channel remote controllers, building Sumo robots, building table robot mockups in LEGO and EDU Robotics, implementing and testing the new core robot design, and coming up with ideas for mentoring new teams. Due to the temporary closing of the Sharon Community Center, our SYRA meeting place is unavailable. Anne Pilvines made many calls to various potential meeting sites, and a team delegation visited the Sharon Public Library on Friday, August 20th. The library director, Kip Roberson, was gracious to allow us to us the meeting room every Tuesday night throughout the FLL season, for which we owe great thanks to him and the library staff. On Monday, August 23rd, a team delegation visited the offices off the local newspaper, the Sharon Advocate, and met with the Editor, Shannon Haley Daggett. She was gracious to publish an article about our team and the SYRA, to announce the start of the new season and invite new teams to join our association, and we are grateful for her consideration. From this point, we proceed into the new challenge!
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