The 2017 season held many challenges for Code Red as a whole. We had a slow start at the beginning of the year because many of our prototypes needed lots of tests. We initially decided to try a ball shooter robot, and we made a wheel shooter prototype because we had amazing success with our wheel shooter in 2016. We also incorporated an arm to pick the gear up off the ground, and a slot to keep the gear in auto. When we played in our first competition we quickly realized that the game was mostly played by gears. Then we did some reevaluation of our strategy and our robot. We decided that it was in our best interest to remove our floor ball intake and replace it with an active gear arm because we had issues with visibility and from across the field. This helped us in our next competition because it was easier to line up from across the field.
Code Red competed in the St. Joseph, Indiana event, the Mason High School Event, the East Kentwood event, and the Shepherd Michigan event. We made eliminations at all of our events, and we came home with quite a few awards, including two Imagery awards, the Engineering Inspiration Award, and the Chairman’s award at the Shepherd event. We qualified for the Michigan State Championship, and while we did not qualify for eliminations, we enjoyed the experience as a team.
Overall the 2017 season was a success. The team practiced teamwork, leadership, problem solving, and communication skills. We also were able to develop what we wanted to address for the next season based on our 2017 season. Code Red truly accomplished our mission of Building Robots to Build Better People.
