We welcomed the new year with a massive surge in productivity and progress. For our first two sessions we split off, as usual, into sub-teams to ensure we were as efficient as possible, as well as having fun!

Hardware and Assembly

First sessions back and we were very keen to make progress on the robot itself. We concentrated our efforts on assembling the chassis and ensuring it was constructed correctly. Additional to that, Isaiah very kindly helped and tapped the extrusion so that we could fit screws into it – metal tapping is something he’d learnt on the day by our teacher, so massive kudos to him, the rest of us are incredibly thankful! This year we chose to use the aluminium extrusion in between the wood panels surrounding the wheels for greater stability, we also wanted to add more flair to the robot in terms of design and colour so the outer wood panels were sent home with me (Emma) to paint.

Outreach and Fundraising

We decided to open an Instagram account (@teamcipher425) for this season due to the benefits social media brings for being connected to the rest of the community, we spent some time setting it up in our session on the 9th and immediately we saw how great it was. Not long after setting up the account, we received a message request from Robopeda (RO 169 – 19242) for collaboration, which definitely solidified us in our decision to create an Instagram as it’s clearly the best way to connect with other teams. We spent lots of our second session on the 15th drafting and sending a reply to their request and planning for their Global Connections Project meeting.

Furthermore, for the new term we started to plan for our fundraising, we are ahead on our goal for the year so far but we still have to plan and prepare for more. On our first session back we contacted our teacher asking about fundraising opportunities for this term, we had a couple of ideas revolving Valentine’s Day such as selling roses as a secret gift (which is a fundraiser that our school typically has around this time) and standard bake sale ideas with Valentine’s Day twists. We were informed that we could host a standard bake sale but denied for our other ideas, but it didn’t particularly matter as we still had our opportunity to raise money for the team. On our second session back we started to flesh out the plans for the bake sale, deciding to host it on the 14th of February itself as it lands on a Friday.

Outside of Sessions

Outside of our session plenty of progress was made as well, for example, in terms of software, Leonard, our lead programmer, wrote the Front Arm and Intake subsystems. As mentioned earlier, the wood panels were painted, however there was some miscommunication leading to… less than ideal outcomes, which we’ll unpack in our next session update. Also mentioned earlier is the Robopeda Global Communications Project meeting, which was attended by Alex and Leonard on the 19th – it was an overall fantastic meeting and we’re incredibly grateful to Robopeda for reaching out and giving us this opportunity.