This week, the Breakerbots made some exciting progress! We focused on fine-tuning our Development Robot, making huge improvements to the intake, indexer, elevator, and climber to ensure everything runs smoothly. After a lot of hard work, the programmers can finally begin their work, and bring the robot to life with code. It’s a big milestone, and we’re eager to get started on the next phase, beginning to design and build our final competition robot, Leviathan! Stay tuned for more updates as we keep pushing forward!

     This week, we successfully completed our development robot and handed it off to the programming team. The programmers have been working tirelessly to fine-tune the robot, making adjustments to ensure optimal performance. Meanwhile, the drive team is getting ready to start practice in the Student Union. For now, they’ll focus on getting comfortable with the robot, but once we have the full practice field set up, they’ll be able to run more advanced drills. Everyone is working hard, and with competition season getting closer, we’re excited to see all the pieces coming together!

     This week, we’ve made great progress on our development robot. The team completed the mechanical assembly and started wiring on Wednesday. Our design has an intake that pivots out of our robot to pick up game pieces, and puts them through the indexer and into the arm on an elevator, which can place game pieces anywhere on the field. Finally, our robot has a grabber and a winch to allow it to climb on a swinging cage. Next, we’ll finish the electrical work and hand the robot off to programming for testing and refinement. At the same time, the CAD team is hard at work fine-tuning designs and making adjustments to improve Leviathan’s performance. Everyone has contributed their skills and effort, and the excitement is building as we bring Leviathan closer to completion!

     During week 2, the BreakerBots honed in on the robot’s design, machining and assembling prototypes–and finalized mechanisms. Thus far, the team has tested two different game piece intakes on the development robot, one for picking up the large playground balls (algae) and the other for intaking the pipes (coral). An elevator system has also been assembled for our devbot, alongside a climbing mechanism and game piece indexer, and we’re hoping to test these systems next week. Machining began for the mechanism to place coral as well. Devbot has also been great for the programming team, as they’ve gotten a stronger sense of the full robot and can more easily pre-program. For a full photo reel of our season so far, check out our official Youtube channel!

     During Week 1, the Breakerbots worked on CAD and prototypes for their 2025 robot, “Leviathan”. The team prototyped many different designs for the algae intake, the coral intake, and the climb and finalized design decisions for these tasks. The CAD team started making full models of these mechanisms as well as the robot, and our mechanical team assembled the robot’s chassis and wired it. Finally, on January 11th, Breakerbots participated in the 2025 Central Coast Design Review with ten other local teams. Now, our software team will start programming the robot, and the team will continue refining prototypes for Leviathan.

     This year’s game event, Reefscape, started off with a blast revealing a new game, new challenges, and new robot opportunities, and we are eager to step up to the challenge! This fall, we gained many new members, bringing our total to over 40 teammates, all of whom are excited to get the build season started.
    With a new game comes new rules, designs, and ideas, so our first task was to become familiar with the rules. In short, our robot must pick up balls and pipes, place those balls and pipes into different goals, and be able to climb onto a hanging cage. Once we understood the game, we came up with designs, strategies, and concepts to help us create the most optimal robot to achieve these tasks.
    After kickoff day, we will have 8 ½ weeks before heading off to the Pinnacles Regional to face off against many competitive teams. Be sure to come back next week for the BreakerBots Week 1 Recap!