MARS Robotics Team

The Mega Awesome Robotics System (M.A.R.S) is a robotics team located in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. M.A.R.S is an inclusive space that recognizes talent regardless of class, race, & gender ages 14 and up. With its dedicated team members, we are sincere hard-workers who devote ourselves toward our team & spirit using wit, ingenuity, expertise, and applied science. Our mentors work their best to accommodate their students' needs: promoting inclusivity and diversity. We work on developing robots capable of completing various tasks or missions depending on what the season requires, going from object manipulation to launching balls into a goal. Developing the robot is something that we do by giving work to subteams. Subteams are split up in Mechanical, Programming and Electrical, Media, CAD, and Safety. Our teamwork is a strong point, as we try to be inclusive of everyone and have fun while working on the task at hand. Since M.A.R.S is a student-driven team, we can be proud of our work and know that whatever we achieve is the result of our hard work throughout the season.

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FRC Competition

FIRST Robotics Competitions are games where student-driven robotics teams rush to create full functioning robots from scratch to complete tasks revealed every January with an event called Kickoff. After Kickoff, students have a six week period to create their robot before competition matches start sometime in March. Competition rounds consist of two teams, called Alliances, facing against each other in a three versus three style match. Alliances compete for points by completing as many tasks in the given time frame available, and the Alliance with the most points when time runs out wins. Ranking points are awarded to the team that wins and additional Ranking points may be awarded to teams completing special tasks during a round. Teams with more Ranking Points get to move up in the tournament bracket until one Alliance proves superior to the others. Alliances are all selected randomly and shuffled with each round played so as to not give any one Alliance a huge advantage. Last season, the game presented was Charged Up, where students had to make a robot to have the capabilities of picking up cones and cubes, transporting them across a field in a hasty manner, and placing them on ledges or poles depending on the object held. Then the robot would need to attempt to get on a platform with two other robots from their Alliance and score the most points, thus winning against the opposing Alliance.

This season

In CRESCENDO presented by Haas, two competing alliances are invited to score notes, amplify their speaker, harmonize onstage, and take the spotlight before time runs out. Alliances earn additional rewards for meeting specific scoring thresholds and for cooperating with their opponents. During the first 15 seconds of the match, robots are autonomous. Without guidance from their drivers, robots leave their starting zone, score notes in their speaker or amp, and collect and score additional notes. During the remaining 2 minutes and 15 seconds, drivers control their robots. Robots collect notes from human players at their source and score them in their amp and speaker. Each time an alliance gets 2 notes in their amp, the human player can amplify their speaker for 10 seconds. Notes scored in an amplified speaker are worth more points than those scored in an unamplified speaker. A human player may choose to repurpose a note scored in their amp in cooperation with their opponent. If each alliance repurposes a note by hitting their Coopertition button in the first 45 seconds of teleop, all teams in the match receive a Coopertition point (which influences their rank in the tournament), and the number of notes needed for the melody bonus is reduced. As time runs out, robots race to get onstage and deliver notes to their traps. Harmonizing robots, i.e. robots sharing a chain, earn an added bonus. Robots earn even more points if a human player spotlights robots on a chain by scoring a note on the chain’s microphone.

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The FIRST Organization

Founded by Dean Kamen, FIRST is an organization aiming to "inspire young people to be science and technology leaders and innovators, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering, and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership." Teams are available to people from preschool all the way to high school, attempting to grow kids into well rounded young adults in the fields of science, engineering, and technology, as well as inspiring innovation and life skills. As part of a FRC Team, we practice following FIRST's core values by abiding by Gracious Professionalism and Coopertition.
Learn more about FIRST and their goals here.

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Sponsors

Most importantly, we thank our wonderful sponsors, who have helped us every step of the way!