With the long-awaited 2015 FIRST Robotics Competition Kickoff now in the past, Texas Torque is revved up and ready to make the most of the build season. The lab is buzzing with ideas and iterative tests as the team prepares for this year’s competition season, planning on both succeeding in this year’s game and presenting the team’s outreach efforts over the past year through the Chairman’s Award submission.

After kickoff day, the team gathered once again to develop a game plan for this year’s challenge, Recycle Rush. Given the game’s revolutionary nature as compared to the challenges of years past, team members had to tackle the problem with an entirely different mindset from the norm. Monday’s extensive conversations on game strategy and the resulting strategic design yielded a clear and concise game plan, as well as a list of potential prototypes designed to meet the challenge most effectively.

As a result of these discussions, the team has seen significant progress in this first week of the build season. Prototypes design, led by various subteam captains, has run smoothly and has yielded useful data that will undoubtedly come to define many details of the final robot. Based on the successes and failures of certain prototypes, an image of what the final robot might look like is already coming into form. The efficacy with which the team has tackled this year’s challenge thus far is truly admirable, and we hope to continue to work with the same degree of diligence.

The Awards and Outreach subteams have also been hard at work in this past week, hoping to follow up on the successes of the 2014 season. Captains Reagan Spexarth and Jeffery Zhang have worked closely with alumni of the team to improve plans for the essay and presentation and center the work around a common theme. So far, the team is on schedule with these efforts due to the subteam’s hard work.

In other news, the team has been happy to see many of its alumni return to the lab to share ideas, experiences, and good times with the current members of the team. Their continued presence is a testament to the family that the team has built over the years. Of course, the free food is just a benefit on the side.

Stay tuned for more updates from Texas Torque World Headquarters! With the progress of this first week, it’s hard not to be excited for what’s to come.