FIRST Robotics 2020 - Your battery is running low

After the qualification rounds are done there is a break for teams to get lunch and in the case of those who are not moving on, to start packing up the pit areas.  By that time I was exhaused and had snared a chair from one of the judge's stations.  I just plopped myself down, feeling waves of gratitude from my tired legs.  Raising my eyes I saw this video display above a nearby pit.  The caption reads:  "Your battery is running low".   Gee, ya think?

We ended up winning 2 out of 3 on the second day of the event.  Really not bad with a robot that was coming apart at the welds.  This gave us a middle of the pack finish that I consider fine for a rebuild year.  A few random images...

Shortly before the event we discovered that our intake wheels did not grab the ball very well.  This was because when you run the machine on carpet - which the playing field has - as opposed to the wood we have at build HQ , there is a difference.  145 pounds of robot sinks into the carpet.  A 6 ounce foam ball does not.  This web of surgical tubing was a five minute fix that worked great.

Robotics team mascots fascinate me.  But sometimes themes clash.  This year the game had a superficial Star Wars connection.  The team above is called the Wrench Warmers.  Hence the baseball unis.  And the gigantic heads on the guys to the right.  The guy left and forward is wearing a storm trooper mask.  Our head scout, a lad who is also a stand up comedian, stopped by and said he hoped their robot shot better than the storm troopers.

Also in the Star Wars theme, the back of our team shirts listing our sponsors.  All the same font size, as we dearly appreciate them all and equally, but the shorter names being placed further out in the Galaxy Far, Far Away gives the same effect.

It was a draining experience.  We fought through difficulties and learned a great deal.  Being largely irrelevant for mechanical matters and entirely so for software I had a lot of opportunity to converse with other coaches and teams.  Despite having the main drive system near total collapse 5826 never gave up.  At the end they pulled the "H-drive" system that allowed left/right sliding drive.  It was jammed and impairing all movement.  This made us very vulnerable to defenders who could push us out of our firing location with impunity.  Well, Avis Automata is not gonna be impugned, no sir.

Deep inside the robot where the perpendicular powered wheels used to be there is now a black object on the twin pneumatic pistons.  This is what I called the Stompy Foot, a metal box mummy wrapped in friction tape.  In theory we could set up, drop the foot and see if those defenders could push 150 pounds of weight supported by a grippy brick pressed down under the center of our robot.

Alas for the demonstration of their ingenuity, while the team was able to quickly build install and get inspector approval for the device it was not quite ready in time for our last match.  We'll keep this little secret - well apart from the closed world of the internet - for future designs.