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 REBUILT presented by Haas, two competing alliances are invited to score fuel, cross obstacles, and climb the tower before time runs out. Alliances earn additional rewards for meeting specific scoring thresholds.

During the first 20 seconds of the match, robots are autonomous. Robots score fuel into their hub. Fuel can be pre-loaded into a robot, obtained from the human player, collected at the depot, or picked up throughout the center of the field. Some robots may also climb the tower to obtain additional points. During the remaining 2 minutes and 20 seconds, drivers control their robots. Based on the result of autonomous play, alliance hubs will alternate between active and inactive, shifting gameplay between both sides of the field.

Robots can collect fuel at any point in the match and may control any amount of fuel at a time. Drivers control their robots to score fuel into their hub while it is active and may perform defensive strategies or collect more fuel while their hub is inactive. As time runs out, all hubs become active, allowing all robots to score. Robots can climb to the tower’s highest heights to score additional points and claim match bonuses to increase their position in the rankings.

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