Competition Season and Regionals Week 1: Alamo, Inland Empire, Southfield, and GTR West

While the title only has half the events that happened this week, those are the major ones with some of the national powerhouses and interesting happenings.

Alamo (San Antonio, Texas): 118, 148, 624, 2468 (seeing at Hub City)

From Alamo, most of what was shown are that 3 robot cycles are possible, and a much more plausible way to go than originally thought (this was found when watching matches with primarily 118).  Also, we found that defense was a big factor for teams that had slightly lower shooters (148), and quick turns will definitely be needed to maneuver around defense, rather than pushing, since the clear shot is needed.

Inland Empire (Grand Terrace, California): 1678, 399, 1828 (seeing at Arizona)

For Inland Empire, 1678 was definitely the team we would like to be.  Although they would get continually hit, it was about quickly maneuvering, lining up to shoot, and getting the ball out as fast as possible, and, just in general, trying to go around than through.  Also, one of the main strategies seen with them is the over truss to human player, then getting the ball from the human player and scoring, allowing them to do quick 20 point cycles and not have to rely on other robots if other bots on the same alliance were built primarily to be defensive.

Southfield (Southfield, Michigan): 33

Main thing here was watching how great the Bees are (Team 33, the Killer Bees), but watching how teams would respond to them.  Pretty much, I saw a new strategy not previously seen or heavily talked about, which was double team the powerhouse, and one of the other bots run back and forth doing the 20 point cycles (video can be found here).  This will definitely be helpful for anything we may run into at either Hub City or Arizona.

GTR West (Toronto, Ontario, Canada): 610, 1310, 1241

This regional was particularly interesting due to the teams attending.  610 and 1241 are the current defending world champions, so it was nice to see what they had planned.  Overall, the general strategy taken by these teams were similar to 1678, but, rather than doing everything on their own, they would have a different bot positioned next to the human player, and that different bot would be the one that scores.  This opened things up to the 30 point cycles, and does not burn much extra time in the process.

Palmetto (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina)

Pretty much, don't violate G40!

Central Illinois (Pekin, Illinois): 1986

This regional showed the physicality of the game, as can be seen in the last finals match, that people really hit each other hard, and there are not any fouls called if bots are hit hard

2/23/2014; 2/26/2014; 2/28/2014; 3/1/2014 Week 1: Detailed Design Continuation

2/23/2014

Today, we went ahead and started making clamps for the winch axle so we can prevent the strap from ripping out.  General idea is to secure the strap by wrapping it around the axle, then adding clamps with bolts that both hold the clamp and the strap, and have the clamps squeeze the strap and into the axle.  Hopefully, we will be able to add these to the axle Wednesday and start to test the winch again.  Other than this, not much else happened in terms other design things.  For now, the winch is now the only mechanism that has not reached or exceeded the standards and requirements set for it thus far, so it is not as far along in the detailed design process as the other mechanisms.

Approximate times of working: 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM

2/26/2014

Today was a heavy programming and making the other things for the bot day (finishing bumpers, making extra parts, finishing making conveniences for the regionals like battery cart, etecetera).  While we did get to attach the stuff for the winch, we did not get to really test it extensively.  We did try to winch back a couple times, but, when it wouldn't work, we saw that we were missing a screw that tightens a lock collar, which caused the bearing to pop out, so the shaft wouldn't really turn.  By the time we found that, we didn't have time to change it out, so we couldn't really test the part we wanted to.

Approximate times of working: 3:30 PM - 7:30 PM

2/28/2014

Today was another day without changing too much, although the winch was further tested.  Unfortunately, the clamps were not going to be the solution, because what they add to the radius of the axle is far too much, and it stalls out the two mini CIMs.  Because of this, we went ahead and figured that possibly still using the backpack strap could work, as long as there is a heavy duty safety strap/hard stop of some sort, to prevent the backpack strap from breaking due to overextension.  Also, we cut down the clamp a bit, and realized we didn't have to have it encircle the entire axle, but just part of the axle, which definitely helps with the radius of the axle.  Other than working on the winch strap, lights were worked on, but that both doesn't change the overall design and is only to help the drivers.

Approximate times of working: 3:30 PM - 7:30 PM

3/1/2014

Today was Maketopolis, a public mini Maker Faire, hosted by Xerocraft (where we're building).  We got to demo the robot in public, but also got to heavily test the winch and the robot as a whole.  Overall, it worked extremely well, and the shooter was extremely consistent, as well as intake and so on.  Everything worked well, until the strap broke again, but, rather than while firing and unwinding, while winching back.  This showed us we absolutely need to use the yellow strap.

After the strap broke, we went ahead and decided to look at the stall torque of the mini CIMs, and found that it was at about 200 inch pounds, which, by far, is not high enough for what we need, and that is why it stalls with the yellow strap.  Stall torque is the amount of torque needed to stall a motor, and inch pounds is one of the units, which means how many pounds of force the motor can take from one inch away from the axle (foot pounds is more commonly used, but, since we are dealing with smaller distances and motors, it's a lot easier to use inch pounds).  From this, we knew we couldn't stay with mini CIMs there unless we really changed the gearing, which would be complicated and a bit of a process.

Because of this, we figured we could switch the mini CIMs with the CIM motors on the drive train.  When we looked at the stall torque for the two CIMs, we saw it was 360 inch pounds, which, as can be seen, is much better than the mini CIMs.  Also, this would only make us lose about 12% power in the drive train, so, overall, it seemed like it was gaining a lot for not giving too much.  By the end of the day, we were able to change the motors out and reconnect everything, but not test it, as it took the last hour or two of the day.  Hopefully, this ends up working, and all that is needed is testing it tomorrow.

Approximate times of working: 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM

2/19/2014 and 2/21/2014: Week 0 of Competition Season/Week 7 of Build Season

2/19/2014

Over today, not really anyone came, since most of us were working until at least 9:30 PM on the robot last night, and had school, so people were mostly wiped.  As I was expecting no one to really show up and not much to happen, I ended up leaving early at 6:30 PM.  Today kids went ahead and built a battery cart, and we began to talk a bit about the catcher, although not much.  Also, the reveal video got lots of work done on it, and should be ready by tomorrow.

2/21/2014

Today the release video officially was released, and is right here.  As shown, the shot is nice and flat, but we definitely can increase the shooter power still to make sure autonomous goes in.

In terms of things that happened today, the unfortunate happened, and we continue to struggle with finding a permanent fix for the winch.  Today the kevlar rope ended up snapping, so we went out and just got the heaviest duty stuff we could find finally, which is in a way a double strap with nylon in it rated at 4000 pounds, which better hold up when we end up installing it.  Also, we ended up deciding we needed to use some sort of clamp for the strap to make sure it wouldn't rip off entirely if it ended up not being to stay together near the holes for some reason.  Pretty much, as before, the main thing still bothering us is the winch, and everything else is pretty a okay.

End of Build Season: Comparison and EDP Post Build Season Conclusion

As compared to the past years, we went at a pace more than twice as fast.  While in past years we have only bagged everything but the main mechanism, which needed work, this year we bagged a fully working robot that could play the game, and built two different practice robots that were both functional, in addition to anodizing one of the robots.  Overall, the Engineering Design Process was worth it, as it was a lot more organized than past years, and is not too heavily affected by time, which has an effect inversely proportional to the preparation of the people within the group.  Because we were fairly prepared this year, we did not really have that much of a problem with the time restraint, and, as we have been getting more and more prepared, we have gotten further and further in the process as a whole of building a bot.

In terms of my hypothesis about the Engineering Design Process, it is basically the same as my current conclusion of the Engineering Design Process.

In terms of everything else that will be happening, and seeing other robots and so on, most things will just be confirmations of our conceptual design process.  All that is left is to get the results for the performance of the product, and that will conclude my project.

2/18/2014 Day 45: Bag Day!!!

Today was the final day of the build season, and, finally, we got to bag a fully working robot.  While we normally don't meet on Tuesdays, as it is the last day of the build season, we went ahead and finished what we needed to finish since this past Sunday.  Also, we began watching some of the videos that were beginning to come out, mainly those of teams 610 (defending world champs) and 11 (a really good and nationally known team) (click on the numbers to go to their release videos).

Shooter

Today we went ahead and added the kevlar rope to the winch, and, as shown with the practice bot, was effective.  Also, we went ahead and added the surgical tubing, so, by the end of the day, we bagged a robot that had already made shots, which is a huge improvement from past years.

Intake

Today we went ahead and only had to add the pool noodles onto the shooter as the thing that helps retain the ball, and, as it worked on the practice robot, it worked well on the competition robot.

Drive Train

As we finally had a fully driving robot, we were able to play with it, so we got to drive it around and play with it.  As expected, the moving of the battery to the back of the robot was huge, and the robot was no longer rocking back and forth at all.

Overall, the competition bot did everything it was supposed to do, and there was not really anything more that we could ask from it. The robot is pictured below.

Catcher

After looking at the 11 robot, and from our experience at Duel in the Desert, where someone had built a full-out catcher, we figured all that was really needed was the ability to catch/receive from a human player, and all we had to build was something that would settle the ball downward into the robot.  As of now, the general ideas are just attaching what 11 had, or adding an angle to that so it bounces it downward more.

Approximate times of working: 3:30 PM - 11:00 PM

2/17/2014 Day 44: Almost Over

Today was somewhat unproductive, as the meeting was cut short by a steering committee meeting at Xerocraft and a lot of loading so we could work on the bot into tomorrow.  Because of this, as well as a lot of programming stuff, we really only worked on robotics things for an hour or so.  This being said, not really anything can be said about today, other than we got more wiring stuff done on the competition bot.

Approximate times of work: 3:30 PM - 7:00 PM

2/16/2014 Day 43: Tuning and Adjusting

Today was a day of primarily adjusting and playing around with the shooter angle and way to keep the ball on the shooter, as well as trying to figure out how to change the angle, as well as change the winch strap, since it snapped again.

Shooter

Today we were able to play around with the shooter and the angle, and went ahead and did what most teams did to lessen the angle, which was add pieces onto the back of the shooter.  While this worked before somewhat with the pool noodles, it was much easier to do this with PVC and tennis balls to hold the PVC pipe down and stable on the catapult.  Quickly, we were able to test this, and found it to be true, and it worked almost perfectly, in terms of keeping the angle just right for the peak to be just barely at the top of the goal.  A video of this can be found here, and the top of the pole is just below the top of the goal. While one of the uprights on the shooter kinda flew off, the angle was, as could be seen, was fairly flat.

In terms of the winch, the strap began breaking again, so we were now beginning to enter the process of finding a better material and better way to mount the strap onto the axle.  For now, we were thinking it would be a good idea to use Kevlar rope, which had been used before with other things we have built.

Intake

Today we changed the tennis balls off of the intake, and replaced them with pool noodles.  While the tennis balls were somewhat compressible, the pool noodles were smaller in diameter and more compressible, so the ball came in a lot more easily, while staying on the shooter.  Finally, we have almost perfected our intake and ball storage, and it finally works.

Drive Train

As usual, nothing was changed with the drive train, since it was all just fine.

In terms of the competition robot, we went ahead and finished mounting the tower and intake motors.  All that was needed for the competition bot for tomorrow and Tuesday was adding the surgical tubing, the stuff for bumpers, the parts on the back of the shooter, the new winch changes, and wiring.

Approximate times of working: 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM