While most people were carving turkey and shopping for deals during the Thanksgiving weekend, team Landroids spent the Thanksgiving Saturday with a couple rookie teams tinkering with the robots. We put away our robot and focus on making rookie teams’ robots functional and operational for the upcoming FTC qualifiers.  Four rookie FTC teams joined us during this long weekend: Sparks 4936 (Princeton), Carbonauts #5005 (Wyckoff), SyBorgs #5205 (Kendall Park), and RoboTux #5398 (Holmdel). Most had to drive an hour to our Livingston Clubhouse.

This season, NJ had an influx of two dozens new FTC teams, many expanded from the veteran FTC teams, but some are a pilot school program or a new neighborhood venture with no access to experienced mentors.  During the competition event, there was minimal time for us to provide any lasting assistance while being torn between a quick fix or getting queued up for the next match. We felt that during mid-season is the best time for some hand-on guidance, since most teams by now had a chance to get familiarize with the challenge and robot building.  Also, being a rookie last season, we understand how stressful and frustrating it could be during the tournament when the robot is not readied for the competition or eased to work during the tournament.

Therefore, the Landroids Thanksgiving Tinker day idea was conceived to create a relaxing and non-competitive atmosphere for teams to work side-by-side and learn from each other.  New teams who have a similar grass root start as the Landroids were invited.  Due to limited time and space we had, only four teams could be accommodated, and the spots filled up within days!

We set up a full “Bowled Over” field complete with the Samantha field control system, pit tables for teams to work on, decked out the tool bench with some most frequently used power tools, and stocked our snack bar.  At 10 AM, teams showed up promptly with their robots, tools and parts, and went straight to work for the entire day.  What was different from the regular scrimmage or practice events was that our tinker session has no match schedule or workshop agenda.  It was just a casual building session and testing robots on the field.  Whenever anyone had any questions regarding robot parts, construction techniques, programming questions, CAD, engineering notebook, scouting, team management, strategies or rules, etc., our members and coaches were able to give each team our undivided attention to address their specific needs.  We had a mock software inspection toward the end of the day to get all the teams readied for the robot runs, and make sure that they all knew how to program the autonomous and tele-op mode.  Another added bonus was access to the machine shop we have to help teams manufacture or modify parts whenever anyone needed. We also demonstrated some tips on material manipulation and forming.

At the beginning of the day, most robots were barely moving or equip with an end-effector.  By the end of the day, all four were up and running on the field to score in autonomous and tele-op modes.  There was tons of cheering and high-fives all around.  So much more fun to work with other teams and get excited with the accomplishments together, especially if we don’t have to care about the ranking or tracking points. It was a good day, and we wish all these teams the best of luck at the qualifiers. Hope to see you all again at the NJ State Championship!