Team Structure and Programming

The Chickadees had their second weekly meeting last night. When reviewing the work we were supposed to do in preparation for the meeting, we came up with ideas for a team logo. A couple of the Chickadees are working to develop a sketch of what it may look like using the ideas of the other team members. We are excited to see what they come up with. A large portion of the meeting was spent discussing the team structure. Alexa Borden was appointed and accepted the role as team captain. When discussing team structure, there are two main categories to work on: technical and business. Because we are a smaller robotics team, each member will be participating in both. The technical side is split into an electrical subteam, a mechanical subteam, and a programming subteam. When asked preferences, the results of peoples’ choices were fairly well spread across the different subjects. Because Team 5871 has had workshops to help explain the technical side of FIRST Robotics, Jocelyn Cullers, our business mentor, helped figure out what the three business aspects of robotics are and why they are important. Though there will be student leaders eventually for each of the six categories, none have been chosen yet.

Later on in the meeting, we started a free coding program through www.codecademy.com that teaches the basis of Java, the language The Chickadees will be using to program the robot. This was a success and we will continue to work on our coding skills. Team 5871 also talked a little about computer science and what components and instructions a robot needs to carry out a specific task. This was lead by Jenn Kniss and Jeff Buttar, our programing mentor. As said before, please check out our amazing mentors at the website www.coen.boisestate.edu/FIRSTRobotics. The second weekly meeting went well and The Chickadees look forward to our next meeting.

--Alexa