Programming is a crucial part of creating a robot. CAD can design an arm, but mechanical engineering can bring the arm into reality. However,​ the arm is nothing without movement. That’s our job. Programming gives each part of the robot its functionality. From making buttons work to giving the robot the ability to map its own route across the field, programming handles it all. 

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Our programs run strictly off of Java.

​Check out the video to the right to learn how to set up the specific WPILib version of Visual Studio Code.

The basis of all of this comes down to programming the simplest sections of the robot, the subsystems. Subsystems operate off of commands for basic actions. These commands might include moving up, moving down, ejecting a piece, reeling in a piece, and so on. We can combine these to form larger, more complex commands that can truly perform on the field. An example might be a command that moves the elevator up, pivots the arm towards the target, and ejects the game piece to score.

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Autonomous makes up the first fifteen seconds of every match. During this time, areas in which you score are typically worth more points than in tele-op, the mode that makes up the rest of the match. Programmers are in charge of creating the autonomous routine our robot follows, making sure that the robot takes input from sensors on the field to properly score.
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Tele-op takes the remainder of the match. This mode accepts input from the driver and operator to control the robot. To do this, our programmers take the commands from subsystems (independent parts of a robot such as an arm) and connect them to buttons. The click of one button on a controller might result in aligning, moving a part to prepare to score, or scoring in itself.