PC Rocket Robotics is holding its season-ending celebration, and you’re invited.
The celebration will be held on Thursday, February 23, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the team’s Lab, which is located at 137 North Main Street in uptown Stuart. Enter the lab via the black full glass door, situated between Tom’s Barber Shop and Mt Joy Naturals on Main Street. Come down the steps and let the team show you this year’s robot. A handicap-accessible entrance is also available on the backside of the building.
This season, PC Rocket Robotics had 10 team members – Evan Farmer, John David McCann, Hunter Meade, Isaiah Wood, Zane Tankersley, Katerina Carnes, Mackenzie Harris, Mischa McMeans, Abigail Lavender, and Elizabeth McCann, according to John Pendleton, who is among the team’s mentors.
Team members choose whether they want to be part of the Build Team, the Design/CAD Team or the Programming Team. The team then works together to build a competitive robot to compete against teams in the district, which includes Virginia, Maryland, DC, and West Virginia. Each season, the game is released the first week in September.
The team then begins designing and programming the robot to compete in competitions in the December — January time frame, Pendleton said. This year’s game was extremely challenging – it required the team to figure out a way to capture cones on the playing field and be able to score them on junctions as high as 32 inches off the ground. To accomplish this, the team designed a 4 stage linear drawer slide system that was capable of reaching over 36 inches off the ground to score in the highest location.
The programming team uses Java as the programming language to program the robot to operate in both Autonomous and Driver Controlled mode, Pendleton said. This season, the programming team incorporated a webcam into the robot that was used to read April Tags from a custom sleeve they created. Being able to read this sleeve allowed the team to program the robot to park in the correct spot to gain additional points during the autonomous portion of the game. The programming team also used the encoders on the drive motors and the lift motors. Using the encoders allowed the team to precisely move the robot to certain points on the field as well as controlling the height of the linear slide lift.
PC Rocket Robotics’ first competition of the season was December 3 in Christiansburg, VA, Pendleton said.
“The team did an amazing job at this competition. They finished the qualifier round with 3 wins and 2 losses, and ranked 7th for the day,” he said. “The highlight of the day was the team being awarded the Design Award. The Design Award is given to the team that incorporates industrial design and creativity into their robot. One important part of the team’s robot this season (and over the last several seasons) is the custom parts designed by the CAD Team. These custom parts are designed by the team using Solidworks on the computer and then 3D printed in the lab. Being able to quickly prototype and print the parts in the lab is an important advantage for the team, especially when under time constraints. After this competition, the team noted a couple of key issues while running the robot that limited the reliability of the robot. The team spent the next several weeks revising the robot to make the robot more reliable, more efficient and faster on the field. “
The team’s final competition of the season was on January 15 in Charlottesville, VA. At this competition, 35 other teams from around central/northern Virginia and Maryland competed, Pendleton said. PC Rocket Robotics had an extremely good robot. The team finished the qualifying rounds with 5 Wins and 0 losses and was the #1 seed going into the elimination tournament. As the #1 seed, the team had to select two teams to be their alliance partners for the tournament. PC Rocket Robotics, along with their alliance partners, won their semifinals match. However, the team lost the best 2 out of 3 Finals (1 win to 2 losses) due to an unfortunate issue with our alliance partner’s robot in the last match, Pendleton said. The team did an amazing job at this competition, bringing home their first-ever elimination tournament trophy by finishing 2nd on the day.
The mentors for PC Rocket Robotics are extremely proud of this year’s team, Pendleton said. “The season is long, requires hard work, commitment but most importantly, TEAMWORK! We are extremely proud of this year’s awesome robot design, the impressive way it competed on the field, but most of all for the dedication by the team to keep working and make the robot better and better.”
PC Rocket Robotics is a 501c3 that relies on donations from businesses and individuals to provide STEM-based Robotics opportunities for the youth of Patrick County. The team would like to thank all of our sponsors this season, but we are extremely grateful for our Platinum sponsors. Those sponsors are Rodney and Donna Overby, C&F Bank, Mid-Atlantic Broadband, Walmart, Analog Devices, MiNet, and SolidWorks.
If you would like to donate to our team, you may send a check made out to PC Rocket Robotics, INC to:
PC Rocket Robotics, PO Box 165, Stuart, VA 24171.
