Monthly Archives: March 2023

Coming back from the San Francisco Regional, our team was motivated and inspired. This past week, our team focused on not only improvements for our next competition, the Silicon Valley Regional, but for the Houston Championships as well. Some of our goals for the upcoming competitions are to create more high-scoring autonomous routines, implement the vision system, and to fix some mechanical issues. During the San Francisco Regional, our team witnessed the full potential of what a strong autonomous routine can be. Our winning alliance partner, 971, had an incredible autonomous routine consisting of scoring three game pieces. This consistently brought our alliance into a strong position before the teleoperated section. While we were unable to execute such an ambitious auto routine, we are optimistic about the prospects of what our programming team can accomplish.  This year’s vision system includes the addition of the April Tags. April Tags are squares with unique patterns that are placed at significant positions on the field. We were hoping to have vision fully functional by the San Francisco Regional, but after realizing the limited amount of testing that our vision code went through, the team came to the consensus that it was not ready. Once it becomes integrated, however, it will greatly benefit the autonomous routines, driver control, and intake and outtake [...]

This past weekend, our team competed in the San Francisco Regional. Placing the robot on the field at the beginning of a match After setting up the pit and making minor mechanical adjustments to the robot, we focused on cycling practice matches to get as much driver practice as possible. During our practice matches we focused on playing with top teams such as 581, the Blazing Bulldogs, 971, Spartan Robotics, and 649, MSET Fish to gauge our robot and driver’s synergy with other teams. Walkthrough of electrical board during inspection With our new roller intake/outtake and wrist, which we designed once we returned from the Hueneme Port Regional in week 1, we greatly improved our performance. Our new roller intake/outtake allowed for quick alignment and acquisition from the single substation, dramatically decreasing our cycle times, driving up our point scoring during TeleOP. Additionally, we worked on refining our Auto routines to allow for improved charge station engaging. Our robot scored well with fast cycle times from the single substation, and we were able to get our autonomous routine, consisting of one cone being placed onto the top node and then engaging on the charge station, working consistently. We ended the day on an optimistic note and were ready for the qualification matches on Saturday. Systems check and elevator [...]

Coming back from Hueneme Port Regionals last week, our team was given the opportunity to observe and learn from other teams by attending an earlier competition. This past week, our team focused on what went well during the competition, as well as how we could improve our robot. After thoughtful consideration and an in-depth discussion, we decided that we would redesign our intake and four bar arm while making minor changes to the elevator. Some of our goals for the upcoming competition are to create faster cycle times for the robot, refine the scouting app, create a more organized pit, fix the bumpers and robot cart, and reconsider our strategy during matches. For the intake, we aimed to create a larger acquisition zone and more reliable cone storage and intake. The team created a horizontal roller design similar to the one used by team 1678 Citrus Circuits, which would increase the acquisition area and carry the game piece more securely. In addition we changed the motors for the wrist and intake to Falcon 500s to reduce wiring clutter. The intake uses two 2” dead axle intake rollers and a polycord gear reversal to intake both cones and cubes consistently. We are wrapping the rollers with self sealing silicone tape to ensure that the intake can grip the game pieces. [...]

Last weekend, our team competed in our first competition at Hueneme Port Regional (also known as HPR) in Ventura Country, California. We chose to attend this Week 1 competition for the opportunity to test our robot early in the season and to learn from other teams’ designs. During the week leading up to the competition, the team focused on creating spares for the 4-bar arm and energy chain of the robot, and tested its auto routine in order to get ready for the competition. On the first day of competition, which was practice match day, we practiced driving our swerve drivetrain and controlling the superstructure mechanisms as well as tested several autonomous routines, including one which automatically balances the robot on the charge station. Meanwhile, the rest of our team toured the pits to scout other robots and collect data on unique and efficient designs. Additionally, several mechanical changes were made such as adding chain tensioners to reduce the four bar’s backlash. Another thing being worked on was the autonomous routine, we were trying to get a cone on the high node during auto. Within the first few practice matches, our drivers confirmed that although our robot could score cones, we could pick up and place cubes much more efficiently; this led us to revise our strategy to [...]