FIRST Robotics 2020 - Report 2.1

It's always nice to have visible results.  Let's start with those. Images from the middle days of build week two.

Our crew building field elements outdid themselves.  Behold this magnificent and made to specs target tower.  It has since been outfitted with reflective target tape.  It can just be squeezed into our ceiling space.   Software is now working on targeting algorithms.  No fair doing bank shots off the rafters.

We have some new builders who need to learn basics.  While our elaborate custom frame is being designed they modified old components into a functional analog.  This goes to software as a test bed for their work.   Since the best way to learn is to see both the right and wrong ways to do things I hope the cumbersome modifying of beat up parts will make the later (hopefully) smooth assembly of the final version be the work of a pleasant afternoon.  I think the test bed turned out rather well.

We have lots of new components to figure out.  Big time teams meet year round and have five times our numbers.  For us it is "in season" learning and everyone has to wear multiple hats. 

My biggest job this time of year is making sure the team has all the parts they need.  I can usually stay a jump ahead of them....unless they need something really weird.  Which they regularly do.   Time to inventory wheels, pulleys, belts.

Software already has more things figured out this season than in any previous one.  It won't all make it into the 2020 machine but with a young team in rebuilding mode this sort of experimental work will pay off in seasons ahead.

Oh and we have to play around with physical prototypes of ball pick up and launch systems.  We can't count on CAD to do everything virtually!  Pick up prototype version one:

Here's ball shooter version 1.0.  It needs a fair bit of tweaking but was able to hit the target from about 12 feet out.

And finally, the conveyor system that moves the ball from the pickup system to the launcher.  Just loops of surgical tubing driven on shafts.  This version is crude but does work, and there's no reason to doubt we can make a polished version.

So things are moving along.  It's the interplay between physical prototypes and ideal CAD drawings that helps the most.  Already our designers are peering over the test bed and wondering if we can make it "tighter", squeezing the spaces in which the wheels run down another half inch on each side.  With the really exotic mechanisms that are starting to emerge we'll need every bit of it.

Progress as related to earlier seasons?  I think we are about the same.  Crossed fingers regards weather.