Entry 1

With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, recruitment this year is much more difficult as McNair will be going virtual this September.

• • As a result, our FTC Robotics team decides to hold a virtual meeting on Zoom for interested incoming freshmen!

  • Through sending out notifications via school email, we gather 15 incoming freshmen who want to learn more about what our robotics team and FTC has to offer!

During our Zoom call, our co-captains (Ahmed, Manyata, and Amanpreet) introduce themselves along with the rest of our experienced members.

• • Knowing that they are incoming freshmen, we try being more open to them about high school life at McNair.

  • To get to know them better, we hold ice breakers in breakout rooms through a special feature in Zoom.

    • • We talk about what fields of study they are interested in, and how some of them even come from FLL teams!

While FLL is part of FIRST Robotics, we introduce FTC to them because we know there are key differences in our activities.

• • We explain that in FTC, three things are prioritized in a season : the engineering notebook, the robot hardware, and programming. We explain the core parts of our season, and how these three aspects elevate our experiences every FTC season as a team.

Through the Zoom call, we plan to find out what the incoming freshmen want to focus on in our team.

Our co-captains post a roster for the experienced juniors and sophomores who know what they want to pursue.

While having the Zoom call, we want to focus on how our team would not recruit underclassmen based on experience, but based on their interest in what they want to learn and gain from FTC Robotics.

• • As a team, we want them to pursue their own interests in FTC Robotics, whether it be hardware, software, or engineering notebook, and find their passion.

  • We believe by doing so, they will share memories in FTC Robotics and be more active in our team while they do what they love.

Additionally, for our experienced members, our co-captains place us in subteams. Some members receive designated positions.

• • Being head of hardware, Amanpreet lead Martina, Martin, Caitlyn, and Arleen. His role is to help them further develop skills to craft a robot design along with learning how to visually design it using OnShape/AutoCad.

  • Being head of software, Ahmed and Manyata lead Atharva in learning Java through Android Studios.

  • Being co-heads of the engineering notebook, Hooryah and Murtaza organize the documentation of our robot and team this season.

Showcased OnShape, and discuss how we plan to use it this year given our difficult circumstances.

Given the pandemic this year, our school has decided to start virtually for the month of September, but unfortunately we are not allowed to retrieve our robot hardware kits and supplies to construct our robot design due to strict policies.

• • Our hope is to design our robot using OnShape and AutoCad to avoid falling behind throughout the season.

  • Additionally, Amanpreet plans to use OnShape to showcase our robot’s design as soon as the season starts given that we will be unable to build the robot without the materials that are at school.

    • • With this in mind, we hope to allocate our attention in crafting our robot virtually, and when desperate times call for desperate measures, we believe things will come in clutch for our team Clutch Squad!

We want to introduce programming as a skill everyone can learn with practice throughout their time as a team.

• • We first introduce Android Studio, a staple in programming our robot in the past, and Ahmed, along with Manyata, showcase sample code.

    • • Ahmed explains how to download Android Studios for either Mac/Windows and how to download Software Development Kits (SDK’s) along with codes from GitHub from the past Skystone season.

Aside from using Android Studios to program codes, Manyata brings up something she had learned from attending one of the remote software sessions FTC held.

• • Manyata explains how if Android Studios seems a bit daunting to use at first, they could first introduce themselves to block coding. It is much more simplified with having labels to show what each function is used for, and can be converted to Java code on the right hand side as well!