2010

In this year, the Robo Lions participated in both FRC and VRC.



Officers

 * President: president::Tanner Smith
 * Vice-President: vice-president::Logan Su
 * Secretary: secretary::Tyler Thornton
 * Treasurer: treasurer::Brittany Davis
 * Historian: historian::Samir Jain

VEX Robotics Competition
Instead of hosting a smaller FRC game like last year, the Robo Lions decided it would be more beneficial to participate in the VRC where members would continue to learn the basics about building robots before beginning the large robot in the Spring while also bringing something to the club in forms of community outreach, money, and something the team could continue in the future with less effort than designing a entire game like Underdrive.

This year's game was Clean Sweep.

Peachtree Ridge VEX Qualifier
This was the first yearthe teamhosted the Peachtree Ridge VEX Qualifier. Last year the team held the Underdrive event, but this VEX Qualifier would be much more usable in the long run. With fields from Learning Labs Institute and Rick Folea,the team had two fields for teams to compete on. Fred Smith found a magic box to put video output from cameras borrowed from Gene Kreeft onto the VEX Field Management Software. The event was held in the Commons and was split up in half to hold the pits and the game fields. The Master Coordinators of the event were Tanner Smith and Patrick Wortman. Sir Charles came by later in the day to assist.

Lambert VEX Qualifier
After a few weeks of build time after the Peachtree Ridge VEX Qualifier, the team continued work on their robots for the Lambert VEX Qualifier. The first event was cancelled due to snow and rescheduled for the weekend after ship date for FRC.

Three teams from the Robo Lions went to this qualifier, led by Sunny Gupta, Logan Su, and Deepan Mehta. All the teams were ranked all across the board, but overall none of them were in the top eight. Spite this fact, all teams were chosen by the top eight alliances to continue in the game.

The team led by Logan Su made it to Semi-Finals, while the teams led by Sunny Gupta and Deepan Mehta both made it to the finals (spite being on the same alliance) and eventually won the competition working with the RoboRaiders.

Game
This year's game was Breakaway.

Robots
This year the team built two robots or rather two separate drivetrains that evolved into two robots.
 * Tanner Chassis (used in competition)
 * Logan Chassis

Field Crew

 * Driver: driver::Sunny Gupta
 * Manipulator Driver: manipulator driver::Tanner Smith
 * Coach: coach::Logan Su
 * Human Player: human player::Patrick Wortman & human player::Cameron Tedone (substituted by human player::Katherine Li)

Regionals
In 2010, the team attended the Peachtree Regional, Palmetto Regional, and Championships.

Peachtree Regional
After updating the robot with a new intake system - the suction/vacuum, the robot did not work as expected. The vacuum intake system proved to be very picky as far as alignment goes. However, with some improvement of the suction cups - mainly using a smaller tubing with a larger hole in the actual suction cup, the suction was improved.

The team made it to the Semi-Finals with 1746and 1758.

The team's final ranking was 20th out of 49 teams, with a seeding score of 44.

Palmetto Regional
After the Peachtree Regional, the team came to the conclusion that the suction/vacuum system for the robot was not working out. Therefore the team mounted the new roller system that had been made and tweaked in the week between Peachtree and Palmetto.

On Friday at Palmetto the team made headway with the new system achieving a much higher ranking than Peachtree or ever at Palmetto. After moving up and down between the top eight and the top fifteen on the morning of Saturday. Before alliance selections, the team had a ranking of 11, just short of the top eight.

After being picked by 343as first pick and finishing off the first seed alliance with 1398, the team made their way triumphantly through the quarter and semi-finals. In the first round of the finals, our alliance lost due to a disqualification caused by a bumper falling off on the opposing alliance. The next two finals were won without problems resulting in our alliance winning the Palmetto Regional for 2010.

The team's final ranking was 11th out of 34 teams, with a seeding score of 114.

Championships
On the robot, little was changed between the Palmetto Regional and Championships. A super structure was wanted to redirect balls by Sunny Gupta and Logan Su, though it was decided overall that the idea wouldn't benefit the team enough to be worthwhile.

Matches played during the three days that qualification matches were held (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday) resulted in the team staying in the high ranks of the Galileo division. The team had many moments in which the team was in the top eight teams.

The two of the three matches the team lost had specific failures. In the second lost match, a wire came loose on the roller motor due to a bad crimp. This resulted in the robot being unable to kick a ball really well. In the last lost match, the battery strap on the battery cut in half mysteriously causing the battery to fall off the robot and eventually caused the robot to be shut off. The strap was supposedly injured when the robot was tipped on its side in a previous match and the stress of the losing match caused the strap to break.

The team was not picked for alliance selection, despite the high ranking. The team however was the first back-up team for the Galileo division, though none of the robots broke down in the Galileo finals.

The team's final ranking was 16th out of 86 teams, with a seeding score of 203. The team had a win-loss-tie ratio of 6-3-1 after competing.

Awards
This year the team submitted the Website Award, the Woodie Flowers Award for Mary Rutland, and the Dean's List Award for Tanner Smith.

The following awards were won for this year:
 * Dean's List Award for Tanner Smith at the Peachtree Regional
 * Regional Champions at the Palmetto Regional

Gwinnett County Board Recognition
On May 20th, the Gwinnett County Public School Board recognized the team for their performance at the Palmetto Regional. Members and mentors of the team were presented to the Board and got to shake the hand of each board member. The team was awarded a certificate of recognition. Tanner Smith was also specifically recognized for being a Dean's List Finalist (picture of certificate).

The following people on the team attended:
 * Logan Su
 * Tanner Smith
 * Sunny Gupta
 * Mary Rutland

Norcross High School, North Gwinnett (1771) High School, and the Gwinnett School of Math, Science, and Technology also received awards related to their performance in FIRST.

Camp Invention
Over the summer the team took the Chimichanga over kids at Camp Invention to show them what robotics is all about and how these skills can help them later in life.

The team visited Parsons Elementary on June 24th and Mason Elementary on July 21st.

Elections
Elections in 2010 proved to be quite a small show with only one member going for President (Logan Su), five members going for Vice-President, one member for Treasurer (Deepan Mehta, and none for Secretary or Historian.

In the end, the positions with only one candidate were easily decided, though the position for Vice-President was a close call. A first in the club's history, Katherine Li, a freshman in this year (2010), became Vice-President.

The vacant positions were agreed on to be absorbed into the existing positions until a second election could be held in fall of the next season (2011).

Demographics

 * Number of Members: (Recorded 39)
 * Number of Female Members: (Recorded 9)
 * Number of Male Members: (Recorded 30)
 * Number of Mentors: (Recorded 3)
 * Number of Freshmen: (Recorded 8)
 * Number of Sophomores: (Recorded 11)
 * Number of Juniors: (Recorded 10)
 * Number of Seniors: (Recorded 10)