2025 Kickoff Newsletter

2025 Kickoff Newsletter

Week 1 • January 2025

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Quickstrike Niagara

Team 6978

Thank you for all your support of our team! Without your sponsorship, this build season would not be possible. Here is what we have been working on over the past week.

2025 Kickoff

Welcome to Quickstrike Niagara’s 2025 season kickoff! We began the season on Saturday January 4th with the exciting reveal of this year’s game. Just like last year, we divided into groups to analyze the game manual. Each student focused on a specific section, then shared their findings with the rest of the team. This collaborative approach allowed us to quickly understand the game’s requirements and jumpstart the design process for our robot. Following the manual review, we brainstormed ideas for how our robot could tackle the tasks needed to maximize points during matches.

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Designing the Robot

After the robot is built, we’ll need to test it extensively. Each build season, we construct field objects and game pieces to practice with. This year is no different, as we’ve been busy assembling and experimenting with components for the 2025 game. One crucial element we’re working on is The Barge, which will allow us to test our robot’s climbing capabilities. Without these practice elements, we wouldn’t know how well our robot performs until competition, which could make troubleshooting a challenge. These preparations are key to ensuring our robot is ready for the season.

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Preparing Materials

Creating a high-performing robot requires careful planning and strategic decision-making. To maximize our performance within the constraints of time and resources, we’re carefully evaluating which features to include. Challenges this season include adapting to new devices and game pieces. For instance, we need to figure out how to properly mount and use the new radio. Another significant challenge is designing a mechanism to maneuver Coral pieces and place them on The Reef both quickly and accurately. Solving these problems is essential to building a robot capable of excelling in competition.

Next Steps

Looking ahead, our focus will shift to prototyping key functions for the robot. We plan to develop a 3-axis arm for picking up Coral and an algae pickup mechanism, similar to the note collector we used last season. Additionally, our robot will need to climb, so we’ll be tackling the challenge of navigating this year’s complex climbing elements. These prototypes will be critical as we move closer to finalizing our design and ensuring that our robot is competition-ready.