What is Ridgebotics?
Ridgebotics is the officially sponsored Fossil Ridge Robotics team. “We competed in the first robotics competition that is organized under First, who also does First Lego League (FLL) which is a global competition and our goal is to design a robot to compete,” says Ryan Brittingham. But Warren Brewingham exclaims “Ridgebotics is Fossil Ridges Robotics team for inspiring engineering and STEM programs. Every year we announce unique and complicated games with a couple of set tasks and everyone has the same amount of time and resources to build a robot that completes the task.”
Reveal Night
“Reveal Night is our competition robot, we roll it out and show people what we have spent the last six weeks making,” says Brittingham. Another part of the competition is the silent auction, which helps raise money for the team. Everyone is welcome, they get a lot of people supporting and they love showing off what they have been working on because they put a great deal of work into it. Brewington says “We will be showing a reveal video for that robot and will be doing a demo drive for it. Everyone is welcome and do not have to pay to get in but you can buy raffle tickets for the silent auction.”
Past in Robotics
Brittingham has been part of the team for 3 years now., “I joined my freshman year and was the electrical lead and at the end of the year, I became Captain. I was also an operator in my freshman year, controlling the subsystems on the robot. My sophomore year I drove the robot, so controlling it on the drive train then graduated to Drive Coach.” Brewington is the Media Lead and director which means he organizes the photos and videos and helps make the reveal video.
How this project differs from past projects
Every year First sends out a game to all the FRC teams and the game changes from year to year. “Last year we had to put cones and cubes onto different nodes in different platforms. This year is shooting 14-inch rings called nodes into targets. From when the game starts, everyone globally learns what the game is at the same time. From that point, everyone has six weeks to complete the competition robot.” said Brittingham. And Brewington says “Every game is different. Last year they had to stack cones and inflatable cubes on certain pedestals. This year we have to place foam rings on a box either to the side of the field or in a higher-up spot towards the center. We also have to grab onto something and have a robot climb up a couple of feet off the ground.”
