Departments
The Flaming Chickens breaks its team up into departments that specialize in different areas. Each active member of our team belongs to at least one department, and they remain in that department for the season. Like everything else at Team 1540, the departments are student-run. Each department has a student manager, who decides who ends up on their competition team (though we're always very flexible). The manager of the department handles all department issues and planning as well as communication between departments.
Our departments each have a certification process, allowing for easy and thorough training of each new member. The certification requirements are re-evaluated each year by the managers of each department.
Download our 2010 Certification Requirements!
Our departments include: Software, Design, Fabrication, Control Systems, Video, Marketing, Chairman's Award, Web Design, and Competitive Analysis. Managed by Team Captain Kevin, the software department's job is to program the robot and make it do all the cool stuff you see happening on the field. In short, it's software's job to make sure the robot is easy for the drivers to use, and accomplish the task. Rohan is the manager of the Design department. The designers turn the ideas brainstormed at the kickoff into concrete plans. They have to ensure that the robot will meet all the restrictions laid down by the rules of the challenge. When the plans are completed, the design team hands them over to the Fabrication team, who then transforms the plans into a functional robot. Co-managed by Rohisha and Henry, the fabrication department builds the robot using plans drawn up by the Design department. They also build the practice course and shipping crate. All these tasks involve working with metal, plastic and wood using the power tools in the robotics lab. In short, Fabrication does all of the real "work" with construction of the robot. Fabrication and Design have existed as one combined department for the last few years, but since the 2009 season, Team 1540 has separated them to give new members greater chances to be involved with the two areas. Managed by Kalifa, Control Systems deals with the tasks involving wiring on the robot, including the wiring of the control board, motors, sensors or encoders, and all parts of the robot that requires power. Control Systems also constructs and wires the control box from which a member of the competition team controls various functions of the robot. If a job involves soldering, heatshrinking, constructing control boards, routing wires, or dealing with wires in any other way, Control Systems are the ones for the job. Managed by Henry, the marketing department's goal is to spread the news about FIRST throughout our school and the community and to have our team noticed at the competition. This is the group that creates the brochures, travels to community events to present our robot, organizes assemblies and notices at school, and contacts the local TV stations and newspapers encouraging them to cover the competition. The marketing department also gets the team noticed at the competition by making t-shirts, posters, buttons, handouts, and signs. Rohisha runs the Chairman's Award department, which is dedicated to writing and preparing the Chairman's Award submission and presentation. The Chairman's Award department writes the essay, and later, Rohisha chooses the Chairman's Committee, who will present the essay to the judges at the competition in hopes of winning the Chairman's Award. Henry manages the video department. New for the 2010 season, the video department creates all electronic media related to the team. Whether this means slideshows for lab showings, video montages for the pit area, or the all-important chairman's video, the video department is responsible. Members are also responsible for any footage that needs to be taken, interviews that need to be conducted and promotion via the web. Our Web Design Department, co-managed by Eli and Sarah (though Henry wants to have complete control of everything), takes care of our team website and updates all the content throughout the year. Managed by Brynmor, Competitive Analysis is all about knowing everything about everyone at the competition. Competitive Analysis collects data about each team and their performances in matches and then ranks them. Basically, the Competitive Analysis department scouts for other teams that we would like to compete with. They watch all the matches and keep track of a mind-bogglingly large quantity of statistics on all the teams. All this data feeds into our state-of-the-art system, which compiles the match data, and spits out a nice spreadsheet with updated rankings. During the 2009 season, our system predicted the exact score of the match to within two points 95% of the time.
2009-2010 Certification Requirements
Software:
Design:
Fabrication:
Control Systems:
Marketing:
Chairman's Award:
Video:
Web Design:
Competitive Analysis:
