FIRST Robotics 2024 - Helios Reborn

In a number of ways the robotics team has "moved up in the world".  Certainly in the obvious ones, larger crew, more sophisticated designs, greater ambitions.  And also by becoming a "two event" team.

FIRST robotics tournaments are huge events.  50 plus teams from around the area and sometimes from far beyond it.  A display of smarts and hard work that just makes you feel good about the state of young people and their education.....contrary evidence in the daily news be damned.

But if you are One and Done due to budgetary or other reasons, you are limited.  In that short a time frame you might have an off season due to any number of factors.  Did it snow hard in your community causing you to miss a bunch of work sessions?  Did you have unfortunate luck in the random pairings of match partners and opponents?  Did you let the kids go nuts and build something far too complex.......

This happened at the end of our practice day at our first event.  The team had to work until they kicked us out at 8pm just to get all it back together.  And the cumulative damage in every other little joint, widget, wire connection and so forth was considerable.  We just never had a chance to get caught up.  I have not watched the video of our matches from this tournament and in fact may never do so.  

It's hardly necessary in any case.  After a quarter century of doing things with kids and robots I have an unusual, actually I suspect unique, ability.  I can see three to four weeks into the future of any robotics campaign.  Oh, not perfectly....its a bit like my vision and hearing generally....I'll miss a few details but can certainly make out the overall situation.

And so the great rebuild began.

This is a rather busy photo, and the bumpers are off.  But you'll notice that the telescoping elevator is gone.  As is the motor that drove it, the motor that drove a flexible "wrist", the springs, pulleys, rigging and brackets that made up the whole complicated mechanism.....adios.

Much cleaner, and we've probably reduced the potential failure points by 2/3rd.  The intake/shooter is also a new design.

It has two rollers on one side and three on the other.  This is to add a degree of "frisbee spin" to the game piece.  I'll post some video presently, but the velocity and trajectory are impressive.

And so it goes.  We still have a lot to do.  Reducing the failure points is not the same as eliminating them entirely.  But it is a solid piece of work.

Onward.