Week 5 newsletter 2026

Written by Sophia Thieringer, Aishah Adam

General News

It’s the week before Week 0 here at Chicken Bot Pie! It is certainly a stressful time as we count down the days. Learn more about the progress we have been making this week!

Programming

After watching the start of the Week 0’s this week, it has become even more apparent that the autonomous period of the match, where robots are coded to move independently, is essential to winning a match. The programming team is putting most of their focus into perfecting our auto codes, making and refining a variety of autos to have ready by Saturday. Because of the intake design issues from build, the programming team has to wait to fully test the robot. This, while giving the subteam time to work on autos, leaves people not working on auto codes with not much to do, but they are always finding new things to test and perfect! Some members are working on code for the LEDs, lights on the robot which signal to our drive team and pit crew anything they may need to fix or account for. They are testing every single color to make sure we get accurate communications from our robot during the competitions!

Build & Design

As some may be aware, there have been some challenges with the intake design. Within the last week, a new design has been CADed and built a new intake for our robot. We are all crossing our fingers that this new design is successful. While mounting the intake, the team found issues with the new bumpers conflicting with the subsystem, since the bumpers are in their very first tests with the almost completed robot, and are well on their way to finding the fix. Our build team has been on complete overdrive so programming has enough time to test code, and put their all into designing and assembling a new subsystem from scratch, running around the clock to be match ready on Saturday!

Operations

          The operation subteam’s emails and walk-ins regarding sponsorships for our team finally gets to be shown off on our robot! Currently, company logos of our sponsors are being printed to put on our robot (lovingly named Rooster, a throwback to a previous season!) in honor of their support. Additionally, our pit monitor that was so generously donated to our team is going to be displaying a slideshow containing CAD designs, programming animations, and more! The operations subteam has been organizing that flow of what will be shown on the monitor. Recently our team has been very lucky to be asked by team 1868 Space Cookies to be a Menstrual Unity (M.E.) Ambassador. Becoming a M.E. Ambassador means that our team will provide free period products in the bathrooms at competition. This is our first time participating, and we are very excited about it! We will provide products at the Lake Superior competition in Duluth.

Strategy

          The strategy subteam has been consistently tackling the Scouting App over the past few weeks. This app allows our team to track the different moves and successes that teams make during matches in order to determine the most successful strategies to earn the most points. Due to the great progress on the app, members have begun pre-scouting by observing other teams’ Week 0 performances. This will be of great help to our team. In addition to the Scouting App, there has been CADing being done on the strategy subteam. They are working on a new build cart in order to better organize materials. Our build members are so excited about this new cart!

Thank you!!