Raccoon-bot began in July 2021 with two of our alumni, Diya Drajon and Rika Chang (both seen in the "Our Original Proposal" video).
Our initial plans involved creating cardboard molds for the chassis of the bot from recycled carboard. The goal of the bot at the time was to be easily recreatable and made of recycled materials that could help in the cleaning of Texas beaches.
We eventually found this process to be inefficient as due the amount of cardboard need to create a single prototype.
The team decided on using recycled FTC parts for our next prototype we got to work CADing our next design with the goal of it being easier to create. A large downside we discovered was the high cost as FTC parts as they are often expensive and not easily accessible for schools or organizations without FTC teams.
As a team we decided to continue prototyping with FTC parts with the goal of transitioning to parts that mainly consist of material you can often find for free in order to keep the bot made out of recycled parts.
In addition to creating a build guide for our prototype RaccoonBot, we took our prototype Raccoon-bot to FRC States in 2023 to present to other teams and to make them aware of our project in hopes of when we reach out to them they'll be extra exited to become involved in building the RaccoonBot initiative.
Getting back from States (April 2023) we again began revising our RaccoonBot design to be more affordable. As we realized earlier a final product made out of recycled FTC parts may not be overly accessible for many teams leading us to begin researching other materials and designs in the meantime.
We also began work on another device called the "The RaccoonRake" to help us experiment with different ways of filtering litter out of sand. It can either be attached to RacconBot, used by hand, or attached to any other moving object.
We wanted RaccoonBot to be accessible and easy to build for any FRC team, so we rewrote our build guide to include more attainable parts. Our new and improved bot will be able to drive over any sandy surface and pick up 8 pounds of trash. We decided to make our new and improved RaccoonBot using almost 100% KitBot parts so that any FRC team that used the KitBot can build RaccoonBot for what is predicted to be cheaper than the FTC version of RaccoonBot. The build guide for our new and improved RaccoonBot can be found here!!!