Nashoba Robotics

September – December

Mentors and student leaders spend this time teaching team members new skills. Skill groupings include:

• Controls & Electrical
• CAD
• Fabrication
• Programming

This time frame also provides an opportunity to get students involved in some pre-competition season prep work that will continue throughout the year, such as:

• Fundraising
• Award Applications
• Team Building
• Community Service

January – February

As soon as FIRST® unveils the current year challenge, the team gets right down to work. Students hone their skills by participating in activities throughout the build cycle:

• Brainstorming
• Prototyping
• Design
• Fabrication
• Assembly
• Testing
• Strategy/Scouting Planning

March – May

Although build season is officially ended, there are plenty of requirements and opportunities throughout competition season to repair and/or improve the robot. Prior to each District Event the team is signed up to participate in, the team is allotted a total of six hours that the robot can be signed out of its locked bag in order to fine tune, repair, or test the robot. Furthermore, during a competition itself, there are many opportunities to repair breakage, debug and re-design failures, and generally deal with whatever unexpected fiascos happen during the progress of the competition event. Consequently, practically all of the skills used during Build Season are in high-demand during competition season as well.

Additionally, there is a high demand for students to participate in scouting activities prior to and during competitive events. Planning, testing, and observing different strategies used to play the game during the qualification rounds of an event provides critical feedback necessary to determine how the game would best be played during the elimination rounds, if participating. Scouting other teams helps identify which other teams would work best for a winning alliance, as well as helping to uncover the strengths and weaknesses of opposing teams.