Our First Competition with AUTONOMOUS mode!

We dove headfirst "Into the Deep" (can chickens even swim?) on November 16 and debuted our very first foray into Autonomous mode! We're so tickled (because, you know, feathers) our coders were able to get the 'bot up and running even if it was just to tag the submersible structure on the field. Here's a video from one of our matches:

With one competition under our belts (do chickens wear belts?) we are back to the coop to do some rebuilding for better lifting power in Tele-ops End Game, and put our feathered heads together to make Autonomous even more adventurous. 

Thanks to all our Alliances for their teamwork and we look forward to smoother flying next month!

Players develop leadership skills, provide master classes

This past week our players have been developing their leadership skills by mentoring one another with master classes in tool and fastener usage (so our builders feel empowered to choose the right tools for the job), and lessons in driving our awesome new robot (name TBD). 

Major props to our group leads for taking the initiative to help their fellow members come up to speed on engineering, build, and driving knowledge and to Coach Lora for guiding us to innovate!

See you all on the field November 16!

FUN(d)raiser Chickens Socks $3 Charms $1

 The flock is excited to show off their new chicken leg wear and shoes charms! Each team member will be selling these items from now until supply runs out - we think they will make excellent stocking stuffers (and chanuakh gifts) in addition to showing your support for your favorite fowl! 

Don't know any of our team personally but crave the gear? Send us an email at kinematicflyingchickens@gmail.com and our coaches will contact you to arrange local pickup or shipping if needed.

Prices:

• $3/pair of socks
• Set of 5 (one of each style) for $14.
• Charms are $1 each

Please note due to stock limitation we have to limit order of individual pairs of socks to a maximum of 2 of the same style. We are able to accommodate individual charm requests up to 4 of the same styles per order. 

Practice Update - 2 weeks until Tourney 1

 Today's practice we worked on cable & wire management, adding linear servo to claw, building new intake, and printing updated claw design.

Chicken coop gets an upgrade

Coach Lora's garage is our home "coop" this year and it just received a very important upgrade: a large monitor for team watch-parties and a project whiteboard to track our subteam activity and milestones for preparing for competition! Thank you to Coach Lora and resident mentor Todd for your help feathering our nest.

Coming soon is a mural that includes our cool new team logo. We envision the new "media center" to look something like this:

Build team makes progress with new chassis and motor control

We have exciting news for our team! In a team interview, Sam, one of our builders, talked about how we integrated control hubs and improved wheel base design for the new season. The team changed the wheels from being very stiff to ones with a taller design, that will enable the new robot to reach both the high and low baskets and hang rungs in this year's "Into the Deep" game. Our goal overall is to enhance the stability of the robot. 

Check out our progress:

Week 4 and our teams are hard at work

Our classy chassis chiefs and motor movement masters are  hard at work getting our base robot built.

Meanwhile, our field finaglers laid out all the parts and prepped to assemble the submersible; more pictures to come.

Season "Into the Deep" Here we Go!

We started off the year with a pool party at Coach Lora's (a premonition maybe?) We are really excited to get started on this year. Can't wait to find out what "Into the Deep" means!