Now officially into their “build” season, Becker High School’s robotics team, FRC 4607, C.I.S., has been hard at work.

The team members attended the week 1 CMNRH meeting hosted by 3740 Storm Robotics at Sauk Rapids-Rice High School a couple weeks ago. Week 2 was cancelled due to the weather; week 3 will be held at Becker this upcoming week.

The team is comprised of multiple departments; business/finance, chairman’s, engineering, build, programming, electrical, media, marketing, quality control, strategy, and safety. Each of the departments have been hard at work.

“We’re working very hard to figure out the design of the robot and what it needs to do,” said Jack Jones, (strategy). 

Working hand and hand with strategy, the build department has been working to CAD the robot and prototyping concepts and designs.

“The challenge we have is to shoot a foam ball into an eight inch hexagon or octagon five times consecutively,” said Adan Thelen, build lead. “We need to use a turret, which we’ve never built before.”

The team is planning to use cameras so the turret will auto aim itself. 

“The fabrication and progress of the turret has been tricky,” said Thelen.

“The safety department is working on the safety handbook,” said Sarah Schmidt. “We’re adding parts to stay on top of safety in robotics, and training people in shop safety.”

The marketing department is working on this year’s team t-shirts and promotional handouts.

“We’re adding on the new sponsors and working on this year’s Star Wars theme logo,” said Blake Soenneker.

The team is only able to create their robot and compete each year because of its community supporters. Currently they have 47 with more pending. 

“We’ve contacted and visited with sponsors,” said Tristin Emholtz,(business/finance). “We’re also figuring out our budget and working with community outreach.”

Giving back to the community is important to the team. Coming up they’ll be at the Sportsman Banquet and the Becker Business Expo, both held Feb. 22. 

One of the team’s main challenges this year is competing in two different regionals with the goal of winning a fifth Chairman’s Award; they’ve won four of the awards in four years, an accomplishment that had never been achieved in the past.

This year’s FIRST Robotics Competition game, “Infinite Recharge,” is a Star Wars type theme.  The game involves the robot shooting balls into eight inch ports. The robot will also climb a teeter-totter and rotate a color wheel.

FRC 4607, C.I.S.’s first competition is the Great Northern Regional (GNR) in Grand Forks Feb. 26-29. April 1-4 they’ll be competing at La Crosse, WI.