Nicogomezllagaria

By attending Silicon Valley Regional last week, our team was given the opportunity to observe and learn from other teams early in the season. After a busy week at competition, our team had a thoughtful debrief to focus on what went well during SVR, as well as how we could improve our robot. In preparation for Central Valley Regional, the strategy team will be deciding the next goals to focus on for robot actions, hardware, and software, keeping in mind our functional requirements. Over the next two weeks, these respective subteams will implement these tasks in order to maximize the abilities of our robot for competition. This week, our machining team has manufactured new spare parts for Vivace. On top of machining, the rest of the mechanical subteam has been hard at work assembling the modular spare parts for Vivace. These subsystems include the intake, shooter, and rotating arm. For the intake, we are working on redesigning the plates, as well as updating the billet piece for durability. Additionally, we also plan on redesigning the bumpers to increase robustness for the intake and mounting the assembled spares onto our off season swerve, Phil. During SVR, we learned that our bumpers were shifting upon impact, caving into the billet piece causing the piece to take damage. In order to [...]

Our team participated at the Silicon Valley Regional, March 1-3, 2024. We had about 45 students on the team attend the event which was held at the Santa Clara Fairgrounds. The team had a slow start working through various issues before the lunch break on Saturday. During the afternoon session, the team's robot began to perform well on the field scoring notes reliably in the Amp, Speaker and getting on Stage during the end game; our human player was also able to score some high notes during our matches. The team ended the qualifications round in rank 16th. During the playoff alliance selection, we were the first pick for alliance captain 5, The Wildhats - team 100, the second alliance member selected was Eagleforce - team 2073. The alliance of team 100, 972, and 2073 worked their way through the playoffs to reach an equal 3rd place out of a field of 42 teams. The team was also awarded the Industrial Design Award sponsored by General Motors. This award celebrates the team that demonstrates industrial design principles, striking a balance between form, function, and aesthetics. The judges highlighted the following when presenting the award - In the realm of robotics, where innovation meets functionality, one team has set the bar high with their exceptional approach to design. Embracing [...]

As February comes to a close, students have been hard at work during their break. Week seven has led our robot to progress nicely. All of our sub teams have been working hard to prepare for our first competition of the year, Silicon Valley Regional. This week, the arm, shooter, and intake have been mounted and wired onto our robot. Our subsystems were assembled separately and, when done, mounted on the drivetrain. We designed around serviceability and ease of understanding in preparation for competition. All power wires were labeled and routed separately from CAN and sensors for clarity in robot inspections, debugging, and replacing of parts. Wire connectors and extensions, for example, are all centralized in certain accessible locations to avoid having to access our protected upside-down control system board. The programming team has been successful in identifying the initial x and y velocities for shooting while moving (SWM). We can make various test cases, and make them work. We are now working on successfully integrating drivetrain into the test cases by setting drivetrain velocities and attempting to shoot at the actual pose of the speaker. The Vision team has been increasing the accuracy of our computer assisted game piece acquisition. This includes training better machine learning models and fixing the distortion of the camera. We have also [...]