Hello team,

Over the last two days more notable progress was made as the first week of the build season came to an end.

Build continued to construct the field pieces and are remarkably close to being finished. Today the shield generator piece was completed with the exception of six small pieces. Other than those six pieces and the curved slots on the human player station, all the field elements are complete. Although a little behind schedule, the build team was still able to complete the pieces relatively quickly so that we have a full field ready.

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Design had great progress with the initial stages of CAD. The drivetrain design and ball transfer tube design are almost finished and only a few small additions need to be made. Work on the elevator, intake, and color wheel mechanism will begin soon. Design seems right on schedule to meet the several deadlines they have next week.

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Software managed to finish testing with the Falcon 500 motor and get it working after some technical troubleshooting. The electrical test board proved very useful so props to electrical for that. Software is now working on an autonomous and vision system using a modified setup in the drive room (we can’t have the full setup since the ceiling isn’t high enough). This testing will have to extend a bit past the initial deadline set pre-season, but since there is a good gap of time for them to be able to finish the robot code (drivetrain and controls) as well as work on autonomous, it seems like software should be right on track as well.

Looking forward, finals are upon us and things usually mellow down for that week. Design should however still be able to reach some crucial milestones (the progress made so far will help them have an easier week) and software still needs to continue developing limelight tracking and autonomous. Overall, things seem to be only slightly lagging behind at the end of week one but with some extra pushes we should be able to get right back on schedule.

Hello team,

Over the last two days more progress was made that puts our team right on schedule. Yesterday (Wednesday, January 8th) we had our general meeting and an extended period of time after school during which to work on various elements.

The new Falcon 500 motor that we pre-ordered arrived and Software started working on testing with it. Unfortunately some firmware, update, and connectivity issues occurred but as soon as those are resolved testing should be imminent.

Build continued their work on field elements and were able to add half of the power port and half of the human player station to their list of completed tasks. They should finish up the power port and human player station soon and start work on the shield generator soon. It seems like the deadline of completion this weekend should be achievable but might need to be extended slightly.

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Design had a major milestone complete yesterday as well. After a couple of days of geometry testing of three different robot profiles, the design team voted on a specific profile to pursue. Over the next two and a half weeks they will be designing components and passing it on to build for construction.

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Overall, things seem to be on track and according to schedule so far. This has been a chaotic yet overall successful start to the build season and if things keep on rolling like this, we should be in for a well-oiled season.

Blog, Kickoff, and Progress

Hello team,

We’re starting this blog in order to be able to update you guys on season progress and show you what we’re working on. This should help us be a little bit more organized so that we can have a successful robotics season.

Kickoff was on Saturday, January 4th and the new game was released. On Saturday the build team started building field elements with the materials they had in stock while the rest of the team discussed rules, strategy, and made a robot priority list. A small group of students went to Viasat to participate in the kickoff event there and were able to work with many other teams to learn the rules. After a comprehensive and in-depth review of the intricate details of the game this year, we again broke into groups to start discussion about the strategic element of the game. After we had clearly analyzed how we think the game should played and in what ways we believe a robot should perform in order to be successful, we starting making our priority list. We wanted to make sure we prioritized the things in the game that we believed were the most important – like fast and high scoring and securing the climb – while at the same time hoping to push ourselves to accomplish more this season.

Day two of kickoff (Sunday, January 5th) started off where day one ended – the priority list. Now that we figured out what the robot was going to do, we set out to determine how it was going to do it. We started to come up with various possible mechanisms to accomplish the ambitious goals we set and in the process some initially-promising design ideas were brought to the table. At the end of the day design was left with the task of testing out the geometry and viability of each possible profile that was proposed. In a couple of days there should be a comprehensive summary of the findings and an analysis of which specific profile we would want to pursue.

At the same time, build was able to do a quick home depot run to gather the rest of the materials needed to complete the field. They were able to continue working on pieces and some assembly was accomplished.

Simultaneously, a flywheel shooter prototype was made to test an idea for shooting the balls up to the high port. This was powered by a drill and seemed to prove quite effective. We were able to get some high shots as well as some lower ones with a hand-adjusted piece attached to the end, courtesy of Gary. Videos and photos of all the prototypes and various projects we pursue throughout the season can be found here.

On Monday (January 6th) build and electrical continued work on their respective projects. Build was able to assemble the control panel element and achieve more progress on pieces required for the other elements. Electrical was able to complete its test board. This should allow us to test further prototypes using motors rather than drills.

Today, on Tuesday, January 7th, build continued its progress with the elements and another prototype was completed and tested. This time we tested a shooter with two side wheels using drills. It seemed less promising and shot significantly less than the single flywheel shooter but it is possible that may be the effect of the drills not the actual mechanism. Further testing with it using actual motors should yield better results.

That basically concludes the last four days and the progress associated with them. The general timeline for the robotics season can be found here. This should be a regular blog so that almost every day a new recap of the day should be posted. Here’s to a great season ahead of us!