I know I know, the title is cliché but it’s been a hectic third week of build/work season and I’m running out of ideas ALREADY. I probably just need some sleep, but oH WeLL.

In the shop, unfortunately, there is still only 25% building capacity following COVID precautions so there can only be about four people in the shop at any one time and one person per every other room.

Game Design:

1/31/2021 – The Game Design Challenge team discussed changes to the auto/tele-open/endgame structure for our game, a cooperation mission between the teams, which will include some sort of addition scoring location on the opposite side of each alliance’s driver stations, and how climbs will affect endgame and robot interactions during the time. We will be continuing with students creating basic sketches of the field for this week and starting rough drafts of required documentation. -Jonathan M.

Basic Field Map Draft:

2/3/2021 – The Game Design Challenge team finalized the general endgame tasks, but we still need to figure out the specifics of how the climbing mechanism will work and robot interactions during the endgame. We also divided the match time into separate auto/tele-op/endgame time frames for the match. The team broke into small groups to discuss, in more depth, the physical dimensions of the game elements, which included initial CAD sketches with the help of the mechanical team, who also provided their opinions on the game and the design of the game elements and pieces. The other team went further into developing our theme by giving names to game pieces and elements that fit the overarching theme. We decided on where we want the cooperation task between the teams to be located, but still, need to go into further specifics.
We are planning to continue developing the field sketch in CAD, continue to develop the theme, and start to focus on game balancing (points, penalties, etc.). -Jonathan M.

Sketch-Up of Main Scoring Location:

Awards Team:

1/31/2021 – Quick summary from tonight:

• Katie reviewed executive summary questions and edited them to make sure same info isn’t presented twice, etc. Maddie and Michelle will review this week to get down to the right number of characters.
• Aryan and Anne have a draft of WF nomination ready for review.
• For 2/7, will have a rough draft of CA essay ready for review.
• Once essay is in review process, will start outlining CA interview/presentation.
• Need to start focus at the same time on prepping tech and game design teams for doing virtual interviews/presentations.

Mechanical/Shop Work:

2/2/2021 – Here are some pictures of our first blue nitrile wheel! The powder coat chipped a little so we may need to touch up. Tomorrow we’ll be done with the rest, and we’ll try rivets on the remaining two so we have a way to compare and possibly save some effort in future years. Thanks to Maddie, AJ, Shirish, and Jack for doing all the work and making this go so smoothly! -Cameron E.

Definitely didn’t poorly edit out some of the paint chips in these photos with a mouse to make it look prettier… wh- why would I do that? PFFT, definitely NOT ME though.

2/3/2021 – Powder coated. – Luke

2/3/2021 – All 6 wheels ready to go! Spacers were a bit tight so they are being reprinted, some students are planning to come in tomorrow afternoon to get them installed before programming tests them in the evening.

2/4/2021 – I helped replace all the wheels on the drive today with Lizzy, Shirish, Maddie, and Jack. – Alisha

2/4/2021 – So on arrival tonight the compressor was not remounted, and when we went to do that, we found it doesn’t quite fit between the wheels any more; the new ones are notably bigger, roughly 6 1/4″ instead of 5 3/4″.  – Brett Bonner

Cad/Design:

2/4/2021 – For Cad and Design, we have been working on designing a new sheet-metal robot cart with some students to allow them to gain knowledge and experience for next year. We only started meeting with these four sophomores last Monday (2/1/2021) and are at the stage where these students are observing the process first and will begin working on their design in the upcoming week or two. – Me (Hallie)

2/4/2021 – Also, the intake is undergoing a bit of a redraw because we still need to add a spot for the motor (probably a 775 Pro for more power) and gearbox. Overall the basics of the design will stay the same though but more will be added to it. I will try to post some more pictures of it by the middle of next week (if procrastination doesn’t get the best of me first lol). – Me (Hallie)

Programming:

2/3/2021 – In order to ensure we can accurately hit the target from all of the zones, the software team did a ton of testing to characterize the shooter behavior at different flywheel speeds. We started at our standard 6000 RPM from each zone, and established that (yes) we can mostly hit the outer port but (no) we can’t reliably hit the inner port. – Jonah B.

2/3/2021 – At each hood position, we then manually measured the optimal flywheel speed for a variety of distances through trial and error. We can plot those on a graph and use polynomial regression to fit a quadratic function to each one (see below). The x-axis is the distance from the center of the robot to the target in inches and the y axis is flywheel speed in RPM. Purple is the wall shot, red is the initiation line, and blue is the trench. These data points represent the maximum range where we could reliably hit the target in each hood position. A few notes- There’s a fairly wide overlap in the ranges for line and trench, so we’ll probably put an arbitrary cutoff between 180-200 inches when selecting which hood position to use. On the opposite side, the wall shot data was unexpected. We can fairly reliably hit the inner port from several feet back using low RPMs (even if that isn’t incredibly useful). Unfortunately, it’s extremely difficult to make shots between about 90 inches and 120 inches. That’s not somewhere we’re likely to shoot from, but worth noting. – Jonah B.

Flywheel Graphing:

2/3/2021 – After creating these models, we did a quick test by shooting from a previously untested distance in the line hood position, using the calculated RPM. The ball bounced out, but the freeze frame says it all. – Jonah B.

2/4/2021 – For software work tonight we took it out as we were just driving, but we’ll need a solution before we can shoot anything. Short term, it could mount in the right-hand climber space – until we decide to put a climber back on. It could still go between the wheels if supported about 1″ below the bottom of frame rails since the mounting ears are the widest part, but that sort of bottom protrusion probably isn’t ideal (pics below). Also, we’re having some clearance issues between the right-hand pneumatics tank & the hopper which I don’t remember having before, or maybe just hadn’t noticed – may need another custom low-profile clip mount as we have on the left, or something similar. (The right-hand tank has a standard mount, which is taller.) – Brett Bonner

Challenge Updates:

This section is just primarily for challenge videos but I may post some photos in the future.

Slalom Path – Autonav (Run 3):

Slalom Path – Autonav (Run 4):

Slalom Path – Autonav (Run 5):

Barrel Racing – Autonav (Run 1):

Robot motor go BRRRRRRRRR

Quote of the Dave:

“MORE MOTORS?!”

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