Charging our deployment

With the new mini-bot design practically done and ready for water-jetting, deployment is now the “critical path”. Tonight we joined together the drawer slide unit. If we can work all night tomorrow, it should be completed and ready for testing. I’ll make sure to get some video footage if we get it done.

The Inner-Gripper sat in the shop as fixes were made from last night’s performance. I have a feeling we’ll see it out on the field tomorrow, with the new deployment, new OI, etc…

The Chairmen’s team practiced by running through their presentation in front of the entire team. If you show up at the upcoming parent meeting, they’ll be running through it again.

OH, also, it was anounced that the whole school is coming this year to the Seattle competition. It should be exciting!

Inner-Gripping Wonder

Tonight, the minibot and deployment groups had an informal design review with Coach. We’ve figured out what we want to do and how to do it. Tomorrow we should be able to get most of the deployment done. If we can waterjet the minibot components soon, that will take a short amount of time to prepare. I don’t know if I mentioned it yet but we’re building 3 identical clones.

The Inner-Gripper was mounted, then tested for the FIRST time today. It works well, but requires some new code (the pre-set lift heights are different for this one). I must say, from what little I did see, I was impressed. I may have been the advocate for the raptor claw, but we ought to pick whichever works best. After a little drive time, we’ll come to see that this end-effector is a little more forgiving for alignment.

I think we’ve got a pretty exciting robot. The lift is almost identical to 16′s and the end-effector concept is strikingly similar. I have no problem likening to this robot as they are the only undefeated team so far, and with the Alamo Regional win under their belt.

If mechanical design is any indicator of robot performance, I think our systems have put us in a good position.

I’m excited for more driver practice and team prep for Seattle which is just around the bend. We have a lot of things to plan and exciting things to finish!

10 days left, let’s make good use of it!