Archive: Around Town

Code Red Robotics, Ithaca High School's robotics team, has successfully finished the six-week Build Season, and they're off to their first regional competition in Utica, March 2-4. They will also be attending the Finger Lakes Regional Competition at the Rochester Institute of Technology, March 15-17. You can tune in to the live stream on thebluealliance.com to watch all the action. Results for matches can also be found on this website.

For the first time, the team has built two robots. The official competition robot was bagged up at the end of Build Season on February 20, and can no longer be modified. The other "prototype bot" was used to test ideas before manufacturing the final design. It is now being used by the Drive Team to help them train for the upcoming competitions.



This year's game is called 'FIRST (For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Power Up' and has an 80's retro theme. In the game, robots acquire cubes to place on different scales, attempting to tip them in their favor. Points are awarded for the number of seconds each alliance has control over the scales, which are at various heights. Each match lasts two minutes and thirty seconds, so it's critical to work quickly during the game. The Code Red robot has three subsystems: a cube lift system, a cube acquisition system, and a levitating system, which are all mounted on top of the drive system. The maximum speed of the Code Red robot is about 10.2 mph.

There are special "power-ups' that can be used during the matches. Essentially, these are special benefits that robots can earn by giving cubes to their human player during the match. For example, one power-up is called "Boost," which doubles the number of points you receive for a certain time increment. In the last thirty seconds of the match, robots attempt to "levitate" themselves off the ground. If all three robots levitate, there is a big bonus.

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