Join us in Oregon for this week's #TeamREV Spotlight: FTC #9567 - Cybernetic Elks!

Tell us a little bit about your team’s background.

The Cybernetic Elks were formed at Elkton High School in 2011 by Alumni Grace Lyons and Aidan Smith, who continue to check in and mentor us yearly. Our school mascot is an Elk, but ours traditionally has a cyber eye. We have gained recognition over the last couple of years for our community outreach. We are sponsored by Roseburg Forest Products and 7Robotics, two major companies in our county that realize the importance of FIRST Robotics and have hired FIRST Alumni as employees. We are also sponsored by the Cottage Grove Masonic Lodge, and this year, Gene Haas. Our robot name has traditionally been Big Red.

What are a few achievements your team is proud of this season?

• 5 days before our first meet, we had no dedicated programmer. Nate, who was busy mentoring the FLL team in programming and engineering, stepped up. He called on alumni Sean and Josiah and friends on FRC Hotwire while learning to program. He has been self-learning and working with mentors since then. His fantastic work even got praise at our qualifying tournament from a judge and representative from 7Robotics! 
• We started the season strong, ranked #1 in our first league meet. There were some concepts we were not able to achieve with last year’s robot that we decided to use in this year’s robot. One of those was to create our own lift system using Misumi drawer slides and constant springs for fast retraction. We saw this from other teams and decided to learn the engineering to design our own system. We did that successfully and were able to use that in the first meet to hang, which helped us reach a #1 ranking. We scheduled our build priorities and upgrades so that they coincided with every meet, but gave us time for testing and adequate driver practice. 
• By meet 2, we had completed our rocker intake and ramp, and developed our first pixel delivery system. We maintained our #1 ranking. The robot improvements were successful; however our locking lift system broke during a match. We went back to our CAD and decided to create our arm extension and lift slide lock in aluminum. 
• Meet 3 was again successful. We remained ranked #1 and began to prepare for our qualifying tournament by meeting with a team via Zoom and discussing how we could maximize our extension arm pixel delivery system. They shared their arm and helped in our engineering discussion.
• We had an excellent judging session at our qualifying tournament and impressed the judges with our engineering design, development and our programming. We ended as Winning Alliance Captain, 1st place Think Award winner and 3rd place Inspire Award winner!

What outreach efforts has your team worked on this season?

• The beginning of the season was busy mentoring the new FIRST LEGO League teams that we helped start at Elkton Grade School. We connected with teams through Zoom for outreach and mentorship. We also demonstrated our robot for community groups that visited our outreach booth at the Umpqua Valley Summerfest.
• In December, Jessica talked to us about participating in the LEGO #BuildToGive Challenge. We discussed how we could make it even bigger and create more interest in FLL. We partnered with FLL teams, blasted invites out on social media, and got our whole league involved. We collected over 385 LEGO Hearts with over 6,000 shares on social media and partnerships with over 30 teams. 
• We even went to a basketball tournament to share FLL, FTC and FRC robotics and LEGOS.
• We received grant money to help start a new Southern Oregon FRC team, so we are splitting time right now between Cybernetic Elks and X-Flare 9600. We have been allowed to invite more community youth to join and are doing our best to recruit, while also forging a plan to help build an FLL program at the local YMCA. 

What is your team enjoying within the #TeamREV Sponsorship Program?

We love connecting with and interacting with the other #TeamREV members! REV is building a fantastic community of FIRST Robotics members who recognize each other’s achievements, cheer each other on, and enjoy sharing what we learn and what we know about REV products. We are making friends all over the world and helping others. The challenges are fun too, and we enjoy seeing what other teams do and share! We love the products and the sponsorship, but the community that comes with it is fantastic!

We love having you as part of #TeamREV, Cybernetic Elks! Follow the team on these platforms:

• Website
• Facebook
• X (Twitter)
• Instagram