Mountaineer Area RoboticS

MARS will compete at the Pittsburgh FRC Regional March 12-13, follow this link for a live feed and watch us compete!

http://robotics.arc.nasa.gov/events/2010_frcwebcasts.php

This year’s competition, called Breakaway, features robots built by high school teams competing in a soccer-like game. Come meet your local FIRST® robotics team and see our newest robot before we crate it up and ship it off to our first competition. Parents, friends, sponsors, members of the community - all are welcome.

Sunday, March 7, 2010
2:00 to 5:00 PM
Wesley United Methodist Church gym
503 High Street, Morgantown, WV

With 2 days to go, and after a VERY long Saturday filled with tracking down weird electrical faults and pondering the strength (and weaknesses) of 6061 aluminum - MARVIN III completed successful autonomous scoring today as well as hanging from the tower. See the video at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8167857556&ref=ts for the live action shots.

With 4 days left in the build season, the MARS team is hard at work. Saturday night Jan 30 saw the first full power tests of the kicking system on a driving robot frame. Follow this link to the team MARS facebook page for some video of the kicking system at work http://www.facebook.com/#/group.php?gid=8167857556&ref=nf. Still under fabrication are the robot lifting system and the ball capture system. Go MARS ! Full system integration occurred on Feb 8th and here is some video demonstratiing the latest capabilities http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maKt-1ixIaY

The MARS team community outreach robot performed a ribbon cutting for West Virginia University's new Physics building and a groundbreaking for West Virginia University's new basketball practice facility. See the video of the event.

The Mon County FLL scrimmage was held on December 5th on the WVU campus from 8:30 to 16:00. The public was invited and the event took place in Brooks Hall on the downtown WVU campus. Crowds saw fourteen local FLL teams in action as they prepared for the WV State FLL tournament on Dec 19th in Wheeling. The MARS team gathered fourteen bags of food for local food pantries during the event.

The Scrimmage was featured on WBOY at the 5:00 PM and 11:00 PM News. If you missed it you can checked it out here. http://www.wboy.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=71481

MARS has gone trilingual. Check out this MARS story in spanish MARS y FIRST en Espanol and the Rookie Packet in Arabic وسجل هاميلتون حزم في اللغة العربية

The MARS control board with its "EASY" button and LEDs for driver feedback garnered the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Controls Award at the Pittsburgh and Palmetto Regionals