FIRST Robotics 2019 - End of Week Four

Here's how we started the critical Week Four, the time in which it is make or break for any ambitious add ons to your project.

Yep, snow.  After which it got bitterly cold.  This last part was made at least perceptually worse by the fact that in preparation for UK travels in a few months I have my weather app set to Celsius.  You think 28 below zero feels bad?  Try for a moment thinking of it as 33 below.  We don't meet when school is cancelled due to weather, so we lost work sessions on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and our possible back up day, Wednesday.  This is extremely unhelpful.

This was worse than usual, but something like this happens every year.  It is just part of why the teams from sunny California always seem to over perform.  Maybe all that financial and coaching support from Silicon Valley has a little to do with it as well.  Some solace can perhaps be taken in the widespread nature of the Polar Vortex.  Most of the teams we will be competing against in the region are in the same situation.  And at least those who operate under similar constraints are all lamenting as much as we are.

All Hands on Deck for weekend sessions.

Although we have everything sort of working we have some inefficient mechanisms that are drawing a huge amount of power and tripping our reset breakers.  This has never happened before

Yikes!

With two weeks until its debut on a practice field, here's the critter.  The vacuum grabbers have to be worked on a bit, the coordination of the main arm is twitchy and needs a counter balance, we hope we have enough battery life and that somebody can figure out how to drive the darned thing.

Here's the machine Sunday night.  Both the machine and drivers have a long ways to go but, noisy little dickens that it is, it does get the job done!

If you are curious about such things, and reading all the way to the bottom suggests you are, the main vacuum grabber is fashioned out of a dog dish!  On a separate drive frame we have demonstrated viability of a step climbing device that is not on this version yet.  But when they are put together it will be a very complex machine.  By way of comparison:

2016 competition machine
Drive systems 2.
Sensors: 2, encoders each side.
Manipulators: 2, one of which seldom worked.
Pneumatic systems: 1, but I'm counting it as the manipulator here.
Camera one.
Things that could go wrong: 7.

2017 competition machine
Drive systems 2.
Sensors: 2, encoders on each side of drive.
Camera 1, but add one point for it being able to reverse and look backwards.
Manipulators: 3, although to be fair two were simple gates that worked in tandem.
Things that can go wrong: 9.
  
2018 competition machine.  
Drive systems: 2
Sensors: 3, encoders on each side of the drive plus one on elevator.
Camera: one
Pneumatic system: two.
Manipulators: 2, moved elevator up and down, clamps opened and closed.            
Total things that could go wrong adds up to 10.

2019 competition machine (projected)
Drive systems: 3
Sensors:  6. Encoder each side drive, wrist and shoulder. Lidar and vision tracker.
Pneumatic systems: 3, fore and aft lift cylinders and counter force to lever arm.
Camera: one, maybe two.
Manipulators: 4, "Wrist and shoulder". Two different vacuum pumps.

Total things that can go wrong:  17!

No wonder this is being such a tough build, it is about twice as complex as any prior machine.