On Sept. 22, TechHOUNDS robotics team officially began its pre-season. According to club sponsor George Giltner, team applications were due Sept. 22, and no late applications will be accepted.

During the pre-season, Ryan Wilmes, team leader and senior, said each division of the team now plans to train new members.

The six divisions of TechHOUNDS are animation, construction, programming, public relations (PR), robot ops and website design. This year, TechHOUNDS will build skeletal robot bases during the pre-season to prepare them for later competitions.

“Our goal in robot ops is to build three drive trains: one six-wheel drive train, one crab drive train and one called Mecanum drive train,” Giltner said. “Since we don’t know what the game is, we try to make these drive frames in the beginning of the season, the pre-season, so that we can test to see which one might be the most valuable once we’re given the game. Once the game is revealed, then we have three options to choose from.”

In addition to robot ops, Giltner said the construction, programming and animation divisions will be busy as well.

“The construction team is going to be making some benches. A church came to us and said they wanted some benches made for their softball team, so we’re going to make some benches for this church,” he said. “Programmers are going to bring the new students up to speed on how we write code and wire up all the electrical components. The animators are going to work on a safety animation.”

According to Giltner, the 30-second animated video explaining how to use safety precautions in the work environment will be entered in a competition.

Giltner continued to say that PR will start to work on T-shirt designs, the team’s website and its first new flier.

According to Wilmes, his role as student team leader is to oversee the activities of each division.

“I’m just coordinating, making sure the divisions are getting the training done that they need to do, and making sure that they’re planning ahead so that they know that in this many meetings we’ll need to have these skills done so that we can start working on these projects,” Wilmes said. “Right now, (I’m) going through registration and getting everyone sorted out.”

In addition he said, “At this moment, we’re just trying to train any new members.”