Monthly Archives: April 2023

Last week, our team competed in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Championship in Houston from Wednesday April 19 to Saturday April 22. In the George R. Brown Convention Center Out of the over 3250 teams in the world who participate in FRC, only 620 qualify for Houston, where the best of the best compete to see who will become world champions of FIRST. Teams compete in 8 divisions of about 77 teams. Our team was in the Archimedes Division, which included several of the best teams in the world, including defending world champions 254 and 1619, several Hall of Fame teams, and other high-ranking teams such as 2056, 6036, 111, 1577, and 2468. Our robot in the pits after unloading Before competing with the best teams in the world, our team made sure that our robot (“Vertigo”) was at its peak condition. Prior to the competition, we had been testing and perfecting several autonomous routines for our matches, mainly three-piece auto and over-the-charge-station auto engage. On the mechanical side of things, the electrical team hot glued all the electrical connections to make sure no disconnections would happen mid-match, and we had also added LEDs to our robot for better communication with our team members and human player during teleop routines. Furthermore, our drive team had also practiced relentlessly before [...]

With the World Championship just a few days away, our team is busy making a few last minute changes that will hopefully further boost our robot’s performance at Houston.  After the Silicon Valley Regional, extra spares will be required for Houston, and that has been a focus for our mechanical team for much of the week. They’ve also worked on re-tensioning the elevator and cleaning out our swerve drivetrain as part of a maintenance routine on our robot. Additionally, to prevent any connection issues during matches, the electrical subteam has hot-glued the robot’s connectors in the electrical board to ensure that loose wires won’t be a problem. The most noticeable change to our robot is the new LEDs running down on either side of the elevator, which are useful for many things during a match, such as indicating the alliance color and signaling to our teammates about getting a cone or cube based on the color. Our programming subteam is hard at work fine-tuning the elevator and intake to make our scoring more reliable and efficient. Most of their efforts have been on improving our autonomous routine during autonomous mode during our matches. They’vebeen trying different auto routines, such as three-piece auto and acquiring a piece by going over the charge station. Since we will be facing the top [...]

This past week, on Friday and Saturday, our team competed in the Silicon Valley Regional in San Jose. We were able to load in one day early and due to this, we were able to completely dedicate the practice day to playing as many practice matches as we could. During our practice matches we tested out new autonomous routines that were developed and evaluated the limits of the robot.  Silicon Valley Regional was a great competition for our team to demonstrate the new changes made to our robot. At the San Francisco Regional, we would usually deposit a single game piece onto the grid and balance on the charge station during autonomous. However, we tested out the new autonomous routines, which consisted of both two-piece and three-piece routines at this competition. The three-piece routine was able to run when the robot started in a certain position. We were able to score game pieces quicker and more accurately, and we had the same game piece configuration as we did in the San Francisco Regional. Ultimately, our team ended up in 9th place after the qualification matches. During alliance selections, the captain of alliance #3, team 604, Quixilver, invited us along with team 5171, Deus Ex Machina, to join their alliance. Our alliance fought hard against opposing teams, eventually making [...]

As we are approaching Silicon Valley Regional and the Houston Championships, the team has been working hard to prepare for the competition, and we are¥ continuing to make some small revisions on our robot.  Operations plays a vital role in our ability to attend Houston. This past week, the team has continued to write emails reaching out to parents, friends, and other relatives for funds. We have also contacted local and big businesses, seeking corporate matchings for grants. So far, we have been able to raise around 60% of the fundraising goal of $45,000, and we are working hard to reach the full amount needed to fund the competition. Please help us reach our goal by donating on our website! Any help is greatly appreciated, and would help our team attend Houston.  The Mechanical team is finishing creating spares for the robot, including a spare wrist, elevator and intake. Additionally, we shifted to a new bumper mounting solution and moved the bumpers higher to make engaging in auto more reliable.  The Programming team wrote code for a two piece autonomous and engage, and are working up the speeds for a three piece auto in the final days leading up to the Silicon Valley Regional. The team is also working on programming multiple autonomous routines to increase our flexibility and [...]