The programming team worked on creating and fine tuning autonomous modes today. They worked on the main one, shooting three power cells then collecting potentially 5 power cells from out trench and returning to a spot to shoot. Another mode that we’d like to have is steal two of the opponents power cells and then shoot all five. We think these two should cover 90% of the scenarios we’d want at the first event. For our second event and DCMP we’d like to have a mode to get power cells from the middle after shooting our preloads.

The elevator subsystem CAD was finished today, we decided to use two versa planetary’s with a 15:1 reduction in order to free up the student to help with other sub systems. The intake subsystem under went some changes today, to remove a versa planetary that was mounted directly to one of the intake rollers. We made the decision to remove the planetary because planetary gearboxes do not like any load or forces being transmitted through their output shaft. The reduction was 4:1 so we will be using a Neo and belt reduction in its place. The intake should be ready to manufacture starting tomorrow. Its adding holes to the drive rail. The elevator is also adding new holes to the drive rail. So we started taking about the practice robot’s chassis today. Few steps forward few steps back.

The direction we are shooting from changed today, until now we were planning on intaking from the front of our robot and shooting from the back. This has a major advantage in autonomous where you can shoot and then just drive forwards collecting power cells, then moving backwards a little and shooting. This would have been nice to have. Unfortunately the packaging of the subsystems at the moment doesn’t leave use room for the power cell to clear the elevator when shooting. We are remaining under 28″ to go under the trench so everything becomes a tight fit. Its not a big loss just makes the autonomous routes a little harder.

We are very behind schedule. So tonight we decided on a list of things that need to get done by Saturday in an attempt to get a finished robot.

1. Drive Rail holes for intake and elevator
2. Elevator assembled Saturday and mounted to Robot
3. Intake Assembled Saturday on robot
4. Shooter on kit bot
5. Hopper continue progress in CAD
6. Bumpers at least one set
7. Shooter mounting on robot in CAD
8. Drive Base reassembled

So its going to be a very busy next few days, hopefully we pull through and start to get a robot assembled.