The meeting started with a quick team recap from the sub group leads. Next we announced our primary and secondary driver for the season. Together people interested in practicing for driver have had 453 timed practice runs since we started back in November. We’ve selected the two main drivers so they can get the most of our limited practice time.

Quick Prototyping Update

Today we figured out a few things that with the 4″ vectored intake wheels. First thing was lowering the 4″ vectored intake wheels created new problems. We raised the floor instead of lowering the vectored intake wheels. This caused the 4″ vectored intake wheels to push the cone away.

The next thing we tried was adding a compliant wheel in the middle of the vectored intake wheels. Our thinking was that this would better grab the cone and pull it in. We learned we still had problems with the cone not getting pulled in.

The final most important thing we learned is that our back roller is too low. The back roller makes contact with the cone’s edge preventing the cone from being grabbed up into the intake. We added more space between the two. This drastically increased how quickly the cones would be grabbed. But the prototype lost all of the compression against the cone so it doesn’t center or hold the cone at the moment.

To fix the loss of compression we will be relocating the back roller, moving it higher up. In order to do this we have to reconfigure our prototype’s setup. We’ll also remove the green compliant wheel. These two items should return the centering and holding of the cone.

The Arm prototype started it’s assembly process today. The main pieces of the arm were put together. It was discovered a shaft was missing, so that got added to the list of things to manufacture. Next steps are adding the plates that hold the arm to the robot’s chassis.

Charge Station

We completed an audit of the charge station parts list, we found a few pieces that are missing from our manufacturing process. A completed charge station is at best a week out still. At some point I’ll write down how we use Trello to track/handle our part workflow. Until then, this picture will have to hold you over.