This year is a very exciting year for Bonners Ferry High School Robotics Team 2130 Alpha+.
We are proud to be celebrating our tenth anniversary as a team. This landmark year is actually a little hard to believe, especially for all of the mentors who have been with us from the beginning. We are forever in their debt for their efforts in getting this team started. All of this would not have been possible without them.
Alpha+ team members did something different at the end of last season. We had so many students dedicated to attending meetings, that we decided to meet all summer long. First and foremost, we turned to community service work. We teamed up to clean up over three miles of roadside trash in an area of our community that badly needed it! Only then did we focus on our own little clubhouse.
Over the summer, our programmers honed their coding skills, and the build and design teams started working on new projects. Many of our team members also undertook a team sign redesign! Our clubhouse desperately needed new signage to denote its humble abode at the back of the middle school. We also got to spend some time getting to know our new lead mentor, David Nix, who joined us last year.
Alpha+
is revved up for this year’s season. Every year,
FIRST releases hints about the game in advance.
(One year, it was a picture of Rick Astley!)
This year, FIRST decided to do something they
had never done before. They released the name of
the game AND a short animated clip. They did not
reveal any details about the game, but the name
of the game FIRST Stronghold had all the
teams speculating on a medieval theme to the
competition!Our season officially kicked off Saturday, January 9 when the official game was released to teams all across the world, along with the rule book.
In FIRST Stronghold, two Alliances of three robots each are on a Quest to breach their opponents’ fortifications, weaken their tower with boulders, and capture the opposing tower.
Robots score points by breaching opponents’ defenses and scoring boulders through goals in the opposing tower. During the final 20 seconds of the Quest, robots may surround and scale the opposing tower to capture it. (Game description according to FIRST, as reported by Business Wire.) You can view an animation of the game here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqOKzoHJDjA
Even though we learned an almost intimidating amount about the game at Kickoff, we still have a lot to do. In just six short weeks we must brainstorm, strategize, prototype, fabricate, assemble, and program this year’s robot! We hope our very supportive community will keep up with our progress through future articles and our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/FirstTeam2130/.