Monthly updates
Thunder Kites Robotics
We are currently IMPROVING our robot for the 2024-2025 FIRST TECH Challenge season!
Updated monthly...
June update
This year we have competed in many tournaments, through hard and easy times. The school year is coming to a close, but we have plans for the future (as any aspiring team does). The Thunder Kites have been brainstorming many ideas for how to expand our group, from new partners to new robots! We are also excited by the teaser trailer for next year FTC season: FIRST DIVE. Have a look at the video yourselves! This blog entry concludes the second year of robotics at BFIS and signals a renewal of something that will hopefully last generations! If you have any questions, or would like to know more, please contact us at thunderkites@bfischool.org !
TK-football.mp4May Update
May has been a very productive month for the Thunder Kites! Our team was hard at work designing and building a whole new compact chassis for next year's games. We unveiled this new feisty robot to a cheering crowd at the second annual BFIS Pep Rally at the end of the month, where it squared off against our senior robot in a football match! Do you have a good idea for a name? Let us know at thunderkites@bfischool.org ! This new robot is based on the previous robot; however, we changed the composition of the motors, which allowed us to reduce its footprint in half. The Thunder Kites were also present at the annual BFIS International Fair. During the fair, we had a stand with our merch and the playfield for the kids. Kids loved the game and we amassed over 150€ in donations! A huge thanks to all of our supporters!
APRIL UPDATE
April has been a great month for the thunder kites! In our tournament in Lyon, we managed to secure our way into the second place alliance! This was the biggest tournament we have ever been to, with 54 teams participating. After the tournament we have been working on creating a smaller form factor robot, preparing ourselves for next year’s game. Additionally, we have an event coming up in our school, a perfect opportunity for us to display our mights to the community. We will be utilizing this event also as a way to try improve our outreach.
March UPDATE
We have been working on social and partnership outreach initiatives, aiming for financial independence for our team. As the Lyon competition gets closer, we have also been finalizing the latest design of our robot. We have drastically revamped our intake and grabbing mechanisms since the last competition. Our new design allows us to move pixels quickly, accurately, and easily. These changes will hopefully allow us to perform at our best in Lyon!
February UPDATE
With the upcoming Lyon competition in April, the team has been working hard to make changes and improvements to not only our robot but our team as a whole. We've encouraged the senior members to participate in finding and recruiting younger students into the club to foster more innovative and creative minds. The team has finally been able to set up the game field, meaning that we will be able to get lots of practice in before the competition, so we will very prepared to give our best performance yet.
January Update
Our team has returned from the winter break and has gotten right back into the development of our robot. We are implementing new linear sliders, which are more efficient and effective versions of our previous design, to take our performance to new levels. Our coders have worked to refine the movement controls for the mecanum wheels of the robot for simplicity and precise mobility. With the competition in Hasselt, Belgium less than a week away, we are working round the clock to make sure we are fully prepared for our competition. Wish us luck!
December Update
Our team has been working on improving our previous design in preparation for our upcoming competition in Hasselt, Belgium. We have updated the base of our robot to be smaller and include mecanum wheels, which will allow the our drivers to maneuver the robot more efficiently. We also worked on setting up our practice field for the robot so we can improve our driving skills. We are also creating a hanging mechanism for the robot and are improving our plane launching mechanism for the final stage of the game.
November Update
The BFIS Robotics team has spent November working hard to prepare our robot for our upcoming FTC competition in The Hague. Our coding team has been working to get the autonomous mode ready for the competition, while the rest of our team has been working on making our linear sliders more consistent, finalizing the robot's launching and claw mechanisms, and completing anything else we will need for the competition. We are aiming to have a fully functional robot before we compete in The Hague.
October Update
The BFIS Robotics team has gotten off to a great start to the FTC Benelux competitive league, having already been invited to compete in two international tournaments. We are steadily on track to being ready to go to The Hague and Bladel for each of their respective competitions. Our team has been working on new and innovative ways to improve our bots to the best of our ability. We hope to be finished with the final design by this coming November.