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 Crescendo, where students had to make a robot to have the capabilities of picking up foam donuts, transporting them across a field in a hasty manner, and shooting them into a hole in the roof or a segment in the wall. Then the robot would need to attempt to climb onto a chain with two other robots from their Alliance and score the most points, thus winning against the opposing Alliance.

This season

In REEFSCAPE presented by Haas, two competing alliances are invited to score coral, harvest algae, and attach to the barge 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 coral on the reef, harvest algae from the reef, and collect and score additional coral. During the remaining 2 minutes and 15 seconds, drivers control their robots. Robots collect coral from human players at their coral station and score them on the reef. To unlock all scoring locations on the reef, robots must dislodge algae from the reef and either score it in the barge or deliver it to the human player through the processor. A human player can then deliver the algae to the barge. If at least two algae are scored in the processor by each alliance, both alliances earn a Coopertition Point (which influences their rank in the tournament) and lowers the requirements for a ranking point. As time runs out, robots prepare to return to the surface with their algae by grabbing onto their cages and parking under the barge.

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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!