Just a few more pre season meetings before FIRST build season kicks off and things get crazy. It's a smaller but talented team this year, so they should do well. Doing well, among other things, means not repeating past mistakes.
During the design and build stage there are three major things happening at once. Drive base needs to be built. Whatever game piece handling mechanisms - generally called manipulators - are called for need to be built. And software is waiting anxiously to program both. Everyone wants access to the robot.
One solution is to build the drive base on one side of the room, while putting prototypes of the manipulators on an identical but unpowered base on the other side. We did this last year, but imperfectly. The base for the manipulators was not quite the same specs as the final drive base.....and they forgot to weigh it before adding stuff. So, when the drive base and manipulator mechanisms were finally united, the scale told an unhappy tale.....
This year, a new unpowered base to build on. Behold, Protobot.
This is a steel plate with holes laser cut every half inch. It's easy to bolt anything onto it. On the front is a regulation thickness bumper. It can be raised or lowered as needed. Sometimes you have a system where you are grabbing game elements and pulling them over the bumper.
A bit of detail from underneath. This time considerable care was taken to ensure that the casters are set to exactly the height of what we anticipate the drive motors will be at.
With a non powered base you can still push it around and power the manipulators. Last year the elevator controls were worked out this way. The back corners are sharp and not protected by the bumpers so had to be covered.
Oh, and the most important feature of Protobot is.........
We plan on strict weight control this season. I'm considering approaching Ozempic for sponsorship.
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