I am the Vice President of the Robotics Club at my high school. We went to our first competition this year, but the club has been in place for about 5 years. We have two kits to work with and can get the basics down for robots, but we can’t seem to build anything advanced like the ones we saw at the qualifier we went to. We didn’t make it to states so the club’s President and I decided to spend the rest of the year instructing our members and I was just wondering if anyone had any websites we could check out to help us next year. Thanks!
EDIT: We also are trying to not spend money on anything unless absolutely necessary so just mention in your post if it costs anything
Because your club is done for the year, it is hard to continue to work because you don’t know what next year’s game will require (It will be revealed at worlds in April). However, you can presume that it will probably require a robot to gain height and manipulate objects in some way. A good place to look for ideas is either the forums or youtube. Also, search around on google for different concepts for arms. My personal favorites are 8-bars, double-reverse 4-bars, and scissor lifts. Make sure you understand the pros and cons for all the different concepts. I’m sorry I can’t be of any more help.
What you suggested is fine, thanks a lot
Do you have available any of the programming languages like RobotC or EasyC? Even a simple robot can serve as an educational platform for learning programming at a very good level, especially if you can add a sensor or two. Many Vex teams operate quite well on very little programming ability, but any teams that became very good at programming even simple robots could rapidly advance once they got the hang of things and got their hands on more parts.
If the mechanical aspects and parts availability are what’s limiting you, then look into emphasizing programming. There are even some free programming languages floating around for Vex, though I personally don’t have any experience with any of them.