Autono-miss

Well, good news, we got the CAD submission uploaded. With that out of the way, we were glad to help out in the shop with the deployment and minibot systems. Interestingly enough, we’re CADing up our designs…

We watched more of the Alamo regional, so scouts could get an idea of what they needed to change on their sheet and how the general flow of the game changed from what we expected. 16 picked 148 and they dominated with114 points including a FIRST and second place minibot.

Speaking of Mini-bots, we re-designed a new deployment, Reilly is working on the CAD model now. I had the pleasure of working with Jake and Brian on the new mini-bot (which became a one day project). The prototype climbs in 1.1 to 1.2 seconds (keep in mind, we deployed at the base)

I will post some footage/go more in depth tomorrow.

The programmers worked on autonomous. They were set back by a mechanical issue at the end of the day though. One of our lift motor’s planetary gearbox seized up. This meant that we had to take everything apart and call it a day.

The autonomous routine they have right now currently drives forward, following the line. It stops at the correct location, raise to max height opens the claw and pops. The only problem is, it doesn’t score all the time, because it either backs up before popping or it backs up with the lift up slowly. It’s great to see that they can knock a tube on, but it would be good if we could bring the lift down and have the robot ready for tele-op. 148 sometimes scores 2 ubertubes! If we can get one up, I think we’ll be in good shape.

There is a lot still to be done, the showing of students isn’t at its peak, but we’re making do with what we have. After seeing some matches, watching our robot and hanging out as a team, we’re all getting excited for competition!

P.S. If you haven’t checked it in a while, the flickr site has been updated with some really neat pictures!

FIRST visitors to the field!

It’s kind of hard to top a day like yesterday. Returning back to work on individual components is rough, after you get a taste of the full working thing it’s hard to go back.

The shop people are essentially done with the “Full Practice Robot”, the electrical team is just finishing wiring all the components necessary to get the whole thing running. With this done, they are now catching the final lift and drive up to speed. The nice part is that we have a live example right next to us. Another plus, we’ve done it once, so we can go a bit faster. Also, a lot of the components were made in unison, so we have less to do this time around.

The end effector group worked on the popping mechanism, since the cylinders for the claw still haven’t arrived (they should be here tomorrow). We were unable to have the cross-bars for the scissor lift precision machined. So we did it ourselves… It needed to be really precise, but even with Ken checking it, we were roughly a 16th of an inch off. Oh well, we really should have waterjetted this in the first place (if we had caught the design flaw). The new ones will be fine and the rest of the work could all be done by students in one night (if all of the components we need arrive). This gave Jordan and I time to design some components to waterjet,brackets for the circuit breaker, status light and camera. If you look at the picture, the two brackets mount on the braces for the lift, while the camera is mounted on top of the inital lift stage (the one that doesn’t move).

I didn’t get down to the gym today, however, I guess that the programmers are still working on finessing autonomous. I am also guessing that the field crew is making everything look pretty/ready for the guest teams/visitors this weekend.

Speaking of which, I forgot to mention that the first team stopped by yesterday. Bear Metal FIRST team 2046 from Tahoma High School stopped by with a drive base. It looked good, but they were having problems getting it to run. They also said that their lift/other assemblies have a lot of work left before implementing. Having our field open/inviting teams not only provides them with space and a field to test, but we can provide them with help!