As kickoff rapidly approaches, we have been finalizing our plans for how we are going to approach this year’s kickoff. We are going to be making heavy use of this worksheet. This worksheet was made to work best with our system for kickoff this year. It took heavy inspiration from The 2791 Kickoff Worksheet, as well as this 1678 Strategy Training Worksheet. Below is our schedule for Kickoff weekend:
Worksheet optimized for online use
Worksheet optimized for printing: 6328 2022 Kickoff Worksheet.pdf
Day 1
- Watch the kickoff livestream
- Break into groups of 5-6 students
- Premade groups to balance experienced students with less experienced and rookie students
- Read the manual as a group, initially skipping over the heavy technical and dimensional parts of it
- Complete Day 1 Part 1 of the Worksheet. This section focuses on understanding the rules of the game.
- Regroup as a full team and work to combine all the groups’ answers into one finished set of answers for that part
- Repeat steps 2 and 3 for Parts 2 and 3 of the kickoff worksheet
- Part 2 focuses on extrapolating more understanding of the game beyond what is written in the manual.
- Part 3 focuses on calculating maximum scores for both an individual robot and an entire alliance in different stages of the match.
- All members starting the 1678 rules test with the expectation that they will pass it before the start of Sunday’s meeting.
Day 2
- Review rules test status and anything major we missed the previous day
- Break back into the smaller groups and create a list of actions that can be done in the game. This can be found in Day 2 of the Worksheet.
- Regroup as a full team and work to combine all the groups’ lists into one finished list
- Repeat steps 2 and 3 for turning the list of actions into a MoSCow sort.
If your team wants to follow our approach to kickoff and you want more specifics about how we are doing it, feel free to shoot me a pm. We will be posting our answers to the worksheet on Saturday and our MoSCow sort come Sunday.
Covid Precautions
As a team, we recently made the hard decision to pivot to a fully virtual kickoff. With the current state of case rates and hospital capacities in Massachusetts, having the entire team in the building at once no longer made sense. With such, we will be making heavy use of Zoom and its breakout rooms feature for kickoff weekend. In order to mitigate spread during our time in the shop following this weekend, we have developed policies, which a summarized form of can be found below:
- Masks must be worn at all times.
- Preferably KN95/N95
- Meetings are scheduled to avoid full meals. Snacking and drinking can be done in a room alone, outside, or in one’s car.
- Limited attendance and attempts to minimize contact between groups when possible
- Contact tracing tracked through sign up spreadsheet and attendance system
- If one tests positive they must isolate themselves for 10 days from symptoms or positive test, whichever comes first
- If one is deemed a close contact (at robotics or otherwise) they must isolate themselves for 5 days assuming no symptoms develop or a positive test
Going into Week 1
Following kickoff weekend, we plan to move to a hybrid approach with some subteams meeting in-person and others remaining virtual when possible. Our goals for Week 1 can be found below:
- Prototyping
- Building field elements
- Attempt to finalize drivetrain CAD
- Setting up basic code project structure/repository
- Start work on scouting app
Obviously these are subject to change if the game (or Covid) throws us a curveball. As always feel free to drop us any questions or criticisms.
Good Luck, Have Fun, and Stay Safe