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What is something that you think is unique about your robot this season? What about your robot do you think would make it stand out at competition?

What sets our robot apart this season is our focus on automation during the Tele-Op period. We’re integrating advanced technology, such as Limelights and AprilTags, alongside various sensors including NavX, limit switches, color sensors, and ultrasonic sensors. Beyond our emphasis on software and sensors, we're dedicated to building a fully custom robot, with a particular focus on creating a fast and elegant chassis through our custom belted drivetrain design. This combination of automation and custom engineering is what we believe will make our robot stand out at competition.

What types of Outreach do you plan to do for this season? Which of those Outreach initiatives are you most proud of?

For this season's outreach, we plan to host several workshops in our community, including sessions on manufacturing using laser cutters and CNC machines, as well as a workshop on vision systems using ArduCam or Limelight. Additionally, we’re committed to visiting local schools to help establish FIRST programs and inspire more schools to explore STEAM. We're also organizing clothing and food drives at our community STEM center in NYC. Beyond our local efforts, we're proud to have extended our support to teams in foreign countries like Taiwan and non FIRST students from Japan, and we expect to continue helping teams from across the seas. Among all these initiatives, we're particularly proud of our efforts to start new FIRST programs, as it allows us to expand STEAM opportunities and make a lasting impact in our community and beyond.

Describe an element of your code which you think will be most advantageous to your performance over the season.

The level of automation and software optimization we bring is our biggest advantage. We use navX micros instead of the built in IMU for our localization and instead of manually aligning to score we have aprilTag alignment. We are able to use distance sensors to aid in collision avoidance and other sensors such as physical limit switches and color sensors to help automate the indexing of game pieces.

What competitions will you be attending? Which of the ones that you listed are you looking forward to the most?

Our team plans to compete in two NYC Qualifiers, followed by the FTC Super Qualifier, the NYC Championship, and eventually Worlds. Progressing to the Super Qualifier, NYC Championship, and Worlds will depend on our performance at each prior event, but we are confident in our abilities and fully expect to qualify for all of them. We're especially excited about the opportunity to attend Worlds, as it will allow us to experience and learn from teams across different regions, expanding our horizons beyond NYC.

How will you be organizing your team at competitions?

At competitions, we’ll be organizing our team into several key subdivisions to ensure everything runs smoothly. Our drive team will be focused on operating the robot during matches, while our student representatives will engage with the judges to discuss our work and compete for awards. The pit crew will be responsible for maintaining and repairing our robot, as well as assisting other teams in need. Lastly, our scouting team will gather valuable data on other teams to help inform our strategy. This structured approach allows us to work efficiently and support each other throughout the competition.

Describe a unique or noteworthy strategic device or element that you think would be useful for this game.

I think the release of the new ftc compatible limelight will be crucial to tapping into the most important element of an ftc game: vision. Already having experience with limelights from FRC, we can use those or any other cameras for our autonomous localization and routine generation and also lessens the driver burden during teleop.

How would you describe your design process? How many options/strategies do you compare? How do you visualize your designs before building?

Our design process starts with in-depth discussions about game strategy and the overall approach we want to take. From there, we move into designing prototypes in CAD, which we then manufacture out of wood to test and refine. We iterate continuously, making adjustments until our design achieves consistent success. This process ensures that every aspect of our design is thoroughly vetted before moving forward.

How do you divide your team's time between things like design, building, programming etc. Do you enforce this timing? If so, why?

Upon kickoff, we place heavy emphasis on initial ideation and simple whiteboard sketches as we’ve seen they have the potential to reflect effective late season mechanisms. We’d rather the students spend more time perfecting the CAD and building from that instead of discovering various shortcomings with a design only after building it. We believe that following this design stratagem allows more time for the programmers to tune systems and autonomous routines.