Priority List

Today we started the meeting with a strategy meeting involving ~10 people, mix of students and mentors. Our goal was to order out everything the robot is going to do and rank them in a priority list. We had a good discussion and ~30 minutes later we had a priority list.

1. Drive
   1. Reliability, Never Die on Field, Move in Auto, Fast
2. Single climb
   1. If solo climbing level
3. Robot height < 28″
4. Floor intake (touch it, own it)
5. Holding 5 power cells
6. Score outer goal from scoring zone (quickly)
7. Consistent indexing and possession of power cells within the robot.
8. Score from trench with >95% accuracy
9. Level Buddy Climb
10. Intake from loading station
11. Low scoring
12. Control panel manipulation

After creating and ranking our priorities we talked about how we win our first district event, Del Rio. In order to win we need to score more points than the other alliance in qualifications, and earn any possible bonus points. The group decided to draw the line to win Del Rio at achieving number 6. If the robot can consistently do items 1 – 6, we feel that we have a good chance of doing very well at our Del Rio event. We also decided to add a stretch goal, achieving number 9. If we manage to do 1 – 9 our chances of doing well at Del Rio are very high.

Prototyping

Work continues on all fronts with prototyping, another group is spinning up to work on solo climb prototype today. The fly wheel shooter improvements were started on today, the prototype CAD was updated to have 4″ colson wheels, the addition of a solid middle support behind the polycarb, and a 1:1 versa planetary with cim adapter was assembled to be used on the upcoming prototype.

The intake prototype finished CAD today, hopefully it will be cut on the router before Thursday’s meeting, so assembly and testing can begin.

Programming

Programming finished up with running multiple paths, and did some tweaking on the PID tuning of the kit bot. They also began playing with the Lime Light V2 today and managed to detect the vision tape.

Robot in Three Days

I’m amazed by at the number of robot in three days teams this year, and its not just quantity either. There are numerous teams who have produced many high quality deliverables. Teams have produced great videos showing their prototypes and the testing behind them, showing the struggles and how they came up to their final design for their robot. These are great resources and every team can learn from the items these teams publish.

Notable mentions:

• ‘Snow Problem
• FIRST Capital

One thing I’ve taken away from the all of the robot in three day teams, is how hard it is to intake balls, and move them throughout your robot. Multiple teams are putting warnings out that once you get two or more power cells together in your intake they are prone to jamming up against each other.