2025 Reefscape

             Following a restful MLK long weekend, we continued with data testing, creating many new prototypes, and making some important decisions. On Tuesday, our Design Voting Council (DVC) voted on different orientations of the elevator. They settled on an elevator oriented on its side, angled at 4 degrees, due to its benefit of taking up less space. We also started planning which awards we are going to pursue, working on our tech binder, and ordering apparel. We ended the day with our weekly stand-up presentation.              Throughout the rest of the week, we continued prototyping various mechanisms for deep climb, coral intake, and our autonomous routine. During this time, we decided to test an offset bicep climb to see if it would be possible to place the mechanism on the side of our robot. Through many trials, we observed that the bicep arm with an offset often slipped off the cage.              In parallel with the deep cage climb and autonomous path testing, our team has started testing intake from every orientation. Depositing the coral into the trough (L1) has met our functional requirement of 95% or greater for scoring L1. We also tested stacking coral in the trough to maximize our earned points. [...]

             This past week has been extremely productive for our team, with significant progress across various areas. On the prototyping side,  we continued working on the intake, outtake, and our deep cage climb.              We have been avidly testing ways to pick up coral from every orientation on the ground and trying various indexers to re-orient the coral into a vertical position so our robot can score it in the trough (L1).              Over the weekend, we assembled and tested our bicep climb mechanism. We made solid improvements to the lever tube, switching to 4 ¼” plates for version 2, enhancing its strength. We added some extra weights to imitate a robot's realistic weight. We’re also looking into ways to enhance alignment and efficiency, including pocketing and experimenting with alternative lever materials. We also developed a second version of the outtake to enhance its functionality. We’ve completed the drivetrain assembly and the control systems board. Additionally, we installed the climbing cages on the practice field, where we had the opportunity to host Team 971 on Thursday who were doing some auto-testing on their dev robot. We also continued testing on our Alphabot, practicing cycle times and how quickly our robot can score coral on [...]

             After exciting anticipation for the game reveal over winter break, we gathered to watch FIRST’s live stream. We then went straight to reviewing the game manual and brainstorming robot strategies. Our first few days of the season were spent honing in on our robot’s functional requirements and strategy. We also met with the FRC teams BREAD, GravitechX, and NerdHerd to get an outside perspective and exchange ideas.              After deciding our initial strategy, we researched design ideas, taking inspiration from past games and open alliance teams. Before committing to any specific robot design, the team split into Design Groups, each tasked with exploring separately to avoid the entire team fixating on just one design. These teams focused on analyzing scoring potential, identifying challenges, and understanding the game's nuances to optimize gameplay efficiency. Then, we reconvened to collaborate and discuss overarching designs to decide what we would need to prototype. We decided to prototype a ground intake that picks up coral from all orientations and a climbing mechanism inspired by Rust Hounds from Ri3d.              In conjunction with the prototyping groups, a separate group focused on designing the first iteration of our Alphabot. The Alphabot combines our off-season project, a two-stage cascading elevator, a [...]