Mountaineer Area RoboticS

With 15 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 17:00 and 23:00 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