Blog

Nordic Storm has had a exhilarating start to our 2014 season!

The team has decided to get a head start in prototyping by building a functioning, scoring robot in three days. After the broadcast on kickoff day, the team spent the whole day brainstorming and discussing strategy...

We have returned from St. Louis.  Thanks to all who supported us this year.  We had a fantastic time at the FIRST Championship where we were awarded the Creativity Award for our unique climber design.

We received the Engineering Inspiration Award at the 10,000 Lakes Regional and now we need to raise money to defray the cost of attending the FIRST Championship competition in St. Louis April 23-26, 2013.

Please contact our coach, Deb Johnson, if you would like to contribute, or send your donations to her at this address:

Deb Johnson
802 Davis St.
St. Peter, MN 56082
507-995-9551
djohnso@gustavus.edu

At last night's practice things came together, and after a slow start to the build season (is it already half over?), it seems like we have turned a corner and momentum is building. The electrical team finished the wiring at about the same time the programmers were finishing up their driving code. The chassis was driving all over the field last night, and it's FAST and maneuverable. The programmers will work on fine-tuning the control systems while two climber teams work on different approaches. Our goal is to have climbing attachments working by Tuesday night.

As of last night, we now have a full-sized metal pyramid constructed for our full-sized field. If you would like to join us and practice with the tower, go to the field scheduling page and submit a date and time on the calendar (website account registration required).

Last night we got our first prototype for the climber working. We plan to build the other half tonight, and hopefully develop a method to drive it. 

We are extremely grateful to Gustavus Adolphus College to make available a fantastic space for our team to build our robot. It's in the basement of a beautiful large new classroom building on campus and we've affectionately started referring to it as "The Bunker".  It is a large enough space for us to set up a full-sized practice field!  Stay tuned for progress on that.