Written by Avery S.
As the fourth and fifth weeks of the build season come to a close, the team looks forward to embarking on the final stretch of the season, the competition robot. With the Robot Design & Build subteam finishing their work on the BetaBot and the programmers taking over, the team watches their once prospective mechanisms come to life.
As the wiring and programming of the BetaBot ensued, our Robot Design & Build subteam ventured to CAD to put the final touches on our final mechanisms for the competition robot. As of now, we have a complete design that our mechanical team plans to continue executing come week 6. Outside of the shop, each of our subteams have begun their contribution to the Design Binder, an engineering notebook documenting the team’s progression through our design process.
With the completion of the BetaBot, the programming subteam has begun altering their AlphaBot code to adapt to the newer BetaBot, focusing on the elevator and climber. Tests for the climber have been conducted, each serving as trial and error that allows us to identify weak points. Learnings from such tests are constantly being implemented into the current code to bring the necessary functions to the Beta-Bot. Given the similarity between the Beta-Bot and aspiring competition robot, it is vital that the programmers make adjustments to their code to set themselves up well for programming the various elements of our competition robot.
On the electrical side, things have been very up in the air with much debate over the wiring of the competition robot. In a cross mechanical-electrical meeting, coaches and subteam members had conversations over the robot’s wiring configuration, specifically distinct hemispherical channels, as well as the use of a universal wire diagram for easy reference. As it has been throughout the building of BetaBot, the decision to place wiring underneath the belly pan has been decided, with the team settling on power wire underneath and everything else on top. Another back-and-forth was held over the use of Kraken adapter boards with mechanical and electrical compromising over the use of such boards, given everything goes smoothly.
The Game Strategy subteam has prioritized outlining what a basic match will look like, focusing on the teleoperated mode game flow. There have been discussions about whether or not defense is strategic to implement, and if so, what effective defense will look like. The subteam has revisited the autonomous mode, looking at how we can best program our robot to maximize its achievement during the mode. Game Strategy has worked closely with the Scouting App subteam to discuss how scouting will look like during the upcoming competitions.
Marketing & Outreach has seen much productivity in numerous areas, portraying our team’s hard work and ingenious mentality. Our team videographers have conducted a series of build season interviews, emphasizing rookie voices and summarizing the past few weeks to use in our bi-weekly recap videos. Our writers have wrapped up their work on the Woodie Flowers award submissions for coach Sean, finalizing and submitting this past Tuesday. We have made similar progress on our Sustainability Plan as well as completing the design for our pit posters.
As our first competition approaches, our team continues applying their tireless effort in keeping up with our intense schedule. While we have faced setbacks in our preset deadlines, which serve as talking points for next year’s schedule planning, we have done our best to embody the rigor required by our schedule. This sets us up well to be ready for final adjustments in the couple weeks prior to our Hatboro Horsham competition.
