About Chainlynx
In 2019, the ChainLynx team was formed to encourage students' development of STEM and leadership skills. This is done through participating in a worldwide robotics competition hosted by the organization FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology).
Doing so requires using computer-aided design, coding, fundraising and outreach, and building the robot. This large task requires months of work but rewards members with experience in STEM, confidence, and access to a wonderful community.
FRC Seasons
2023-2024
On kickoff we waited in suspense for the drop and First delivered. We wrote up our list of priorities, made a discussion board for ideas, and disbanded for the day with songs in our heads. Our music-themed challenge gave us a lot of ideas for robots, and we spent the second half of kickoff brainstorming how we could get in tune and hit the right notes. During the build season, we designed and utilized a large number of 3d printed parts on our robot and engineered effective quick-swap bumpers. Those combined earned us the Industrial Design award at Glacier Peak for the second time in a row. At Glacier Peak, we were the first backup bot, and against all odds, we were substituted in on the second out of three finals matches when Team 360 had to make emergency repairs. When 360 was done, the alliance won the final round and brought the now alliance of four a blue banner! All of us on ChainLynx are extremely grateful for this season and have prepared to better manage our time and resources next season for the upcoming water games.
2022-2023
We started the season on a full battery following our most successful season so far. We got our CNC router at the start of the year and were prepared to use it for the new season. Kickoff was full of excitement for our first pick-and-place game in a long time. We created a unique design with an elevator and a four-bar system. For the first time, we implemented our drivetrain with Swerve. With this design, we were awarded the Industrial Design Award by FIRST WA. We made a lot of technical and team advancements this year and have been preparing for the 2023-2024 season.
2021-2022
This year, our team had our first competition in 2 years. The Rapid React challenge focused on mobility and transportation. The team grew by an order of magnitude after great recruitment efforts. We competed in 2 competitions and won the Entrepreneurship Award and the Gracious Professionalism Award. We speedily made it to the District Championship for the first time alongside many older and established teams. We focused on organizing the team and wrote our first official constitution to prepare us for our future as a larger, more skillful team.
2020-2021
In the face of an unprecedented virus - Covid-19 - our school went fully online, and our club with it. Unable to work on a robot, we dedicated this year to outreach, branding, and online competitions held by FIRST® (see: Game Design, Innovation challenge).
2019-2020
Our founding year, we created the basics of our club structure. Full of students new to robotics, we were passionate about learning the basics. During this year we created the basis of our club structure, our first robot, and competed in our first competition.
Our team’s first-ever robot was the ‘AT-AT’ (a table - a table). This robot heavily incorporates the use of wood in its design. While uncommon, this allowed us to utilize resources we already had access to so we could focus our attention on more pressing matters such as learning how to code and use power tools. We also had the generous support of materials and teaching from Viking Robotics and the Iron Riders.
Game Design
In 2021, FIRST® decided that with the possibility of normal robotics competitions becoming superspreader events, it would be safer to hold online ones instead. As the normal competition structure was not possible online, they had to devise new ways for teams to demonstrate their technical expertise. One of the things they came up with was the Game Design Challenge. This challenge required our team to create the rules for a possible robotics game - the type that had been held years prior (an example from 2016’s game can be found here).
In our team’s concept, called Back to School, robots had to pick up ‘keys’, exchange them with human players for ‘books’ and then decide between two scoring options. The first, called the ‘backpack’, was a large box that required pulling on a large zipper to open. This was the higher-scoring option, worth four match points. The second option was a large desk that robots could stack the ‘books’ on top of. This netted two match points per book, but robots would gain a special ranking point if they managed to stack five ‘books’ on top of it.
Ranking points have been a concept in FRC for a while now - and they are what determines which team wins the game. One or two is usually given out for having the highest match score, another if a team manages to get a certain number of robots to lift themselves off the ground, and the last is usually reserved for some sort of special task (ex: spinning a wheel to land on a certain color).
Our team’s full submission can be found here.
Club Structure
Our club is divided into two groups: Officers and Leads. The Officers are in charge of how the team operates and functions. The Leads, on the other hand, manage the different sub-teams (specialized divisions of the team) within ChainLynx and do more work with the actual robot itself. A person can hold both an Officer and Lead position with a few exceptions. A person may also be a part of multiple sub-teams.
Sub-Teams
There are sub-team leads for all teams except the drive team, mechanical department, etc.
Business & Marketing Department
Running a robotics team takes a surprising amount of money with participation 5,000 necessary a year just to participate in competitions! As such, our business team must hold fundraisers and apply for a variety of grants and sponsorships. This team also often engages in advertising.
Controls Department
As in the name, the code team creates the code for the robot. Our school offers a variety of computer and coding classes so this team can vary quite a bit in skill level. We currently use Java and our GitHub (where we store our code) can be found at ChainLynxRobotics · GitHub..
Drive Team
This team is at the frontline at competitions - driving the robot! While this sounds like a job that could be accomplished by one person, matches are short and often complicated - requiring one person to survey the field and make real-time strategy decisions, another to drive the robot, and one to two more members to perform maintenance and game-specific actions (giving a game piece to the robot - etc).
Mechanical Department
This team sketches, prototypes, and CADs to develop a design for the robot based on our strategy for the season. Once a final CAD design is made, they use it as a guide for building the robot.
Strategy Department
This team works with the Drive team to figure out what their actions should be for the upcoming matches by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of their opponents and teammates.
