Zenith, named for being at our peak performance, was 484’s 2023 Charged Up robot. It featured a telescoping arm which is the team’s first telescoping arm since 2015. Like many of its predecessors Zenith drove on a west coast drive train powered by 2 neos on each side. Mounted on our telescoping arm was a claw that could pick up both cones and cubes from both the single substation and the double substation. On top of the telescoping arm and claw we had an intake mounted on the front of the robot. This intake was used to pick cubes off the ground and speedily take them to the floor hybrid links. Some of the special features of our robot this year were custom metal pieces for the arm as well as 3D printed pieces that our telescoping arm ran on. With some great driving, operating, and a great robot on our side our team was able to win our first blue banner and qualify for worlds for the first time since 2014.
CHARGED UP – The Challenge
CHARGED UPSM was the 2023 FRC Challenge. In this game 2 alliances of 3 robots race to complete a 3×9 grid with varying height. At the bottom level teams can place cones or cubes that they can grab from either a slider station or a chute station. At the mid and high levels there are designated poles for cones and platforms for cubes. Each robot may only hold one piece at a time and score it at bottom, mid, or high. In each team’s community there is a charge station which acts a large seesaw at the end of each match teams may balance it for 10 points or interact with it for 6 points. During the first 15 seconds of the match robots move without their driver each point scored in auto is worth 2 extra points. The alliance with the most points wins the match! The game manual can be found here.