Coming out of week one of build season ahead of schedule, we quickly shifted gears from strategy, and into design and prototyping. Our strategy team had laid out in week one exactly what our robot had to do during every second of a match, including autonomous mode. Armed with this information, our mechanical team took over, quickly brainstorming ideas for mechanisms and putting them together in our shop.
Our design subteam leader started by gathering all of our mechanical subteam members together to discuss different drivetrains and mechanisms on our robot. Each of the members joined their own small groups to come up with different sketches of mechanisms that were required for this year’s robot. Once designs were presented to the entire group, certain questions were asked about each one, such as, “Is that design the simplest or quickest way to do that action?” or “Can we make that design complete that action in a certain amount of time?”
While the team members continually asked these sorts of questions, they couldn’t make any final decisions until prototyping the mechanisms.
Each design was considered, and then consolidated into a handful of prototypes to be built. Each member then signed up for a prototype to work on during the week. We ended up making great progress, focusing more on proof of concept and critical dimensions than we ever have done before. Things went well for the former part of the week, but once Friday hit, we were out of luck.
Snow! The first major snowstorm of the s
eason:, we ended up getting over two feet of snow over the course of two days. Our school was closed for three days, between Friday and Sunday, and we lost precious build season time. Despite the setback, our subteams continued to interact through our online team forum, where members could post ideas and have discussions without actually meeting face-to-face. For example, our programming subteam organized an online video chat through the forum, and spent much of their Saturday at home, coding various subsystems of the robot. In addition, we were able to make much progress on vision tracking for our shooter this year. After experimenting with various cameras and connection methods, the programmers were able to finish much of the utility code that runs the vision processing.
Hopefully, week 3 won’t have any issues with inclement weather. In order to make up for the lost time, our team agreed to secure extra hours at our school’s shop during week 3. We intend to finalize our robot design this week, by finishing all of our prototyping, and drawing all of our end effectors in CAD. In addition, Computer Components Corporation finished manufacturing our drivetrain parts during week 2! Let’s get excited for the assembly process, and for the rest of build season!
