FIRST Robotics Report 2023 - The Trials and Triumphs of Week Five.

Week five of Build Season can be pretty stressful.  Any system you don't have running properly....you might not pull off at all.  It's a matter of getting new ideas, getting parts, getting it to work before you have to take it into competition.  And...at some point imperfect but workable solutions become preferred, as it is critical to let your drivers actually practice with the machine.  An excellent driver with a good machine is going to do better than a less good driver with a superb robot.

Monday started with two problems.  The grabber has not been successfully mounted on the arm.  And the arm is ridiculously overbalanced.  So much weight so far out.  How much?  Well that's why you need to mount that grabber!

Fortunately we have just enough length left in our height restriction that a 3 or 4 inch projection off the back of the arm can be managed.  Here we are with just a couple of bungees holding the arm up without any motor input.  Of course this does not have the grabber claw on yet.

The claw by the way has been improved and now grabs things with vigor.  It weighs a bit more than would be ideal, but we'll just have to find a way.  It is now attached and ready for action.  The robot is also having the electronics being put on board.  The gal doing this keeps looking daggers at build team every time they tinker with structures up above.

Here's our new pit with banner.  Pretty snazzy, and a morale booster on a slightly stressful Monday.

We got a lot sorted out on Tuesday.  The pesky arm balance issue seems to be fixable with three bungee cords in the right place.  We've upgraded the grabber to the point that it does not need to get an ideal grasp of something.  Here we are holding one of the inflatable game pieces by one corner!

The wiring is going forward.  Looks a bit like spaghetti.  Should be finished on Thursday.

At this stage of the game you'd prefer to not do any drilling on the robot.  Aluminum fragments are Death Rain to electronics.  But sometimes you have to.  We deploy sweatshirts to cover things when possible.  In tighter quarters you use both a vacuum and a piece of plywood with duct tape - sticky side out - to catch any metal fragments.

Practically speaking the robot is now mechanically complete.  Another day of wiring and plenty of programming and drive practice ahead.

By Thursday we were in the home stretch of wiring, maybe another 45 minutes to do on Saturday.  We now have to find side projects for our fabricators.  Here are some nice clip on carrying handles so you can easily lift the robot off the playing field and bring it over to the transport cart.

Here's the robot at the end of the session.  Lots of pink pneumatic tubing showing.  I wanted red but it was out of stock.

A bit of robot team humor.  This is our practice robot.  The switch does not do anything.

And we have now turned over the practice robot to our drivers as software begins to prep the competition robot.  The weirdness of omnidirectional swerve drive takes some getting used to.  No better way to learn than to just keep going back and forth, back and forth....

The Saturday session is always the most productive.  We set up our pit again.  The side walls are  free standing but when the pit card and tool tote are fastened on the structure is stable.  The whiteboard will hinge on the front post.  Daytime it will have match info.  Night time it swings shut as a gate and has good night robot messages on it.

Drive practice with our test bed.  Herding game pieces around and making the run from pick up to drop off stations many times is helpful even without the manipulator arm.  Lots of skill on display today.

And here's the competition robot.  Bumpers on and all mechanical systems done.  Lots of software tweaks ahead, probably a couple of days worth.  Oh, and a close read of the rule book says the bumpers need to be lowered 1.5 inches.  Sigh.  Well I anticipated something of the sort and have alternate mounting brackets ready to install on Monday.

Good night Robot Howard.