On November 20, 2022, we had a great combined meeting with the Cookie Clickers from nearby Bennington. We each introduced our robots, discussed our design decisions, built, drove, and played.

We showed off our two-pronged approach: we have, at this point, built two mostly-complete robots. One uses a jointed arm as the collection and delivery mechanism, and one uses a slide lift to accomplish the same purpose. A big thank-you to the Vermont Academy for Science and Engineering for support in this endeavor!

We compared our claw designs; we have basically settled on some kind of pincer for handling the cones, but haven’t yet settled on a final design. We were able to show the progress we’ve made on our various prototypes, and the Cookie Clickers likewise showed off their manipulator and how it works.

Although our team’s space doesn’t allow for a full field, we had our mats set out with a few junctions so that we could drive around — mostly for fun, because who doesn’t like making a robot go?

Our teams then split in two, so that we could make alliances between us. We had a large paper gameboard of Power Play, designed and shared by team 12611 (Paper version: https://bit.ly/ftcboardgame 3D version: https://bit.ly/cadmodel) and had our alliances claim junctions to understand some of the game’s strategy.

We all had a great time! Flash forward to January 29th, 2023, when we joined them at their space on Main Street in Bennington.

Each team presented robots, in preparation for the Judges’ presentation at the upcoming Vermont State Championship competition on Feb. 11, at CVU in Hinesburg. While neither robot was completely finished, it was great to see them both actually on the field!

We are looking forward to joining the Cookie Clickers again at the competition!