FIRST Robotics 2019 - End of Week Two

This is my fourth time through the cycle of FIRST build season.  It will also be the last time, at least under the old rules.  Next season FIRST is eliminating the compressed six week build season that culminates in "Bag and Tag".  You'll be allowed to keep tinkering right up to competition.  Since we have - to date - always finished just a bit ahead of schedule I figure we'll just have to go to early weeks competitions to keep our customary work pace going.

Lots of small and medium projects coming together.  Week three will be where we integrate them.

We have the mounting tripod for our lift arm and the gearbox that will be the "shoulder".  Here they are connected and temporarily sitting on our robot transport cart.  It moves but seems to have a bit of mal-alignment that is limiting function.

We are working on the "wrist" that can angle a suction cup studded "hand" up and down.

The drive train is still a work in progress.  We have had a successful test of the side drifting "H-drive" but need to make it far more robust.  The center wheel takes some hits especially when we have to run up a ramp at the end of the match.  We are planning on mounting it on a spring system or perhaps a pneumatic cylinder that engages and disengages it.

We have a vacuum system. It seems to grab and hold the ball fairly well.

At the moment we are working with two drive bases of equal dimensions.  One is the test bed for the H drive.  The other still has conventional wheels and will mount the manipulator arm and vacuum.  Eventually we will build enough spares of all systems to have two complete robots.  One for the bag and one for practice.

Software has been working with this drive base to develop a semi auto mode.  Get the robot close to target and the sensors will take over.  Promising early results.

And so it goes.  Some of the work to date has been exemplary.  Some has been shoddy and needed to be scrapped and redone.  With all critical systems sort of working we think we are OK for this point in the build season.   Better to find out your limits early.