This is the website for Team 9960, a group of Grade 7-12 students from Northwest Missouri. We are learning the mysteries of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) through the exciting process of designing and building robots to compete with other teams in the First Tech Challenge Program.
This year’s challenge is powered by RTX. This season’s challenge is called Center Stage.Lights, camera, STEAM! Science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) inspire big ideas, bold action – and creativity. Our skills make it possible to create art and experiences that bring us together, entertain us, and move us. During our 2023-2024 arts-inspired robotics season, FIRST® IN SHOWSM presented by Qualcomm, we will celebrate the roles our STEM skills play in the arts and design and build a world of endless possibilities. This season, FIRST® Tech Challenge teams are raising the curtain on how design, creativity, and precision play a role in creating all new experiences. You can find the video detailing this year’s challenge here: 2023-24 Challenge Reveal
Weekly Update
8/8/23 Our first meeting, we deep cleaned the shop for this season
8/21/23 Our mentor Mrs Nelson went out to several different school districts and provided them with posters for any students of interest. She went to Stanberry, North East Nodaway, Jefferson and South Holt.
8/30/23- This week we have planned our next meeting for September 5th at the nelson’s shop
9/5/23- This week we had a meeting to plan for the reveal on Saturday and we also welcomed some new members to the team
9/9/23- Today we went to the 2023-24 reveal in Kansas City and got our field parts.
9/16/23- We began the field set up process and our team has started dividing inot groups of CAD teams, Code teams and Inspire award teams.
9/30/23- We finished up field construction and made a plan for this year’s robot.
10/7/23- This week we started our hardware team by taking apart our old robot and started making our airplanes for testing.
10/14/23- We started building the chassis of our new robot
10/17/23- We started building our new robot’s grabber arm for the pixels and voted for shirt design and robot mascot.
10/28/23 This past Tuesday the hardware team started building our lifts and our mentor helped us brainstorm how we should do our airplane launcher. Today we had a group working on buttons that we can give away during our meets, we also had the hardware group working on the robot we figured out that our lifts weren’t going to work as a 45 degree angle instead they needed to be a 60 degree angle.
11/4/23- This week we had meetings on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday we mainly worked on trying to finalize our design and coding.
11/18/23- This meeting we brainstormed and worked on the drone launcher.
11/25/23- At this meeting we brainstormed a different design for our grabber because we are struggling to pick up two pixels at once. We also are still working on the drone launcher and figuring out how we want it to work. We have come to a good design for it now we are just getting it put together and attaching it to the robot.