FIRST Robotics 2019 - End of Week One

Although I have frequent moments of doubt I am pleased with how the team has tackled the challenge of Week One.  I also have no idea if what they are working on will be a magnificent success or a spectacular failure.

But it's all good.  There are reputed to be some teams out there where the adult coaches dictate the design process, and have active hands on in the building phase. With team 5826 on the other hand, I wander from one working group to another, trying to make sure that they are staying on task.  And they have come up with some very audacious ideas, the sort of thing that I would actually not advise them to take on with the compressed build season of six weeks.

But it is their team, their robot.  They are learning, and how/if it works will teach them more. 

Current thinking is that they will build an entirely new drive train, one that sacrifices pushing power for maneuverability.  And we'll focus almost completely on working the higher altitude targets.  The mechanism for grabbing the flat discs and the round kickballs will be a great big vacuum cleaner.

I'm not sure why they went this route.  One of our clever kids brought a shop vac to our first build session.  At that point it was going to be either used in the robot, used to clean the shop, or put into our team benefit auction.  But once they started playing with it.....

Some views of Week One:

We are using a new vision tracking system this year.  It is creepy in part due to the glowing green "eyes".  

Also in the creepy category, here's a video of it following team members around as they go here and there with a reflective target.  Notice that the black "Orcabot" fin has been put back on.

Because I took the crew up to Minneapolis for the official Kick Off I missed the early design decisions.  The various things we are supposed to pick up can in principle all be handled with vacuum cups, much as industry moves irregularly shaped objects about. Here's the math that purports to show how much pressure will be necessary.

Last year's robot was dubbed "Mr. Clamps".  I shudder to imagine the final name of this thing but so long as the fin is on - here joined by the "drift wheels" - it is still Orcabot, or in this instance Orcabot 2.

As of Sunday night the experimental "H-Drive" was still not working well on the carpet we will have to compete on.  But on the positive side, our crews have built the tall "Rocket" that we have to put things into, and the tripod that supports our swing mast has been fabricated.

And here is version 2.0 of the vacuum grabber, along with the ball and disc it will have to latch onto.  

What a week.  And next week it all happens again.