Gears of Success
To allow each team member to contribute in the area they are best at, Gears of Fire is divided into three major sub-teams: programming, engineering, and notebook. Each team member is required to be a part of a larger sub-team but may choose to join the sub-teams of driving and/or computer aided design. Communication and collaboration are essential to a successful team. Gears of Fire uses the professional messaging software, Slack, to allow sub-teams to communicate within each other and other sub-teams in an organized manner. Gears of Fire also uses Google Drive to maximize efficiency when sharing files, particularly amongst members of the notebook team.
Gears of Fire has existed for 13 years. This year, the majority of the team is new to FIRST, allowing experienced team members to have an excellent opportunity urnity to teach new members. Last year, Gears of Fire won FIRST's Inspire Award for spreading STEM throughout the world! Last year, Gears of Fire competed in the world championship in Houston, Texas for the second year in a row! This year, Gears of Fire's goal is to continue its streak and go to worlds again!
Programming
Gears of Fire's programming sub-team consists of three members. Two of these members are new to FIRST. Gears of Fire writes code in JavaScript, using Android Studio. To promote collaboration between programmers, GitHub is used to allow all programmers to share code. Programmers are responsible for creating a program that is able to score as many points as possible in 30 seconds autonomously, without any human assistance. Programmers must also create a program allowing two people to drive the robot using controllers. Both programs require repeated tests and debugging.