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Along with the team’s consistent perseverance, we made huge improvements to be well prepared for the East Bay Regional (EBR). With the CADing finished last week, we were able to start the week straight to assembly and continuous testing. This week has been packed with testing, improvements, and strategic discussions as we gear up for upcoming competitions. From refining intake mechanisms to optimizing our scouting app, every detail is being fine-tuned to ensure peak performance. We assembled spare components onto the beta bot for testing purposes, ensuring reliability and durability under competitive conditions. Additionally, minor improvements were made to the scouting app to enhance usability and efficiency. To address control system stability issues, adjustments were made to the plate under the CANivore. On Wednesday, we focused on improving the practice field to better simulate real competition environments. By Friday, we had fixed the camera mount to ensure better visibility and alignment during matches. A new intake system with a larger wheel was implemented to address the issue of pushing the coral away during both practices and competitions. We are currently testing different wheel sizes, comparing 5-inch and 3-inch wheels, while evaluating the impact of material flexibility under high-speed rotation. Significant progress was made on Saturday, with improvements to the elevator rope mechanisms for better stability and control. The energy [...]

Auto Decision (2024-2025) While PathPlanner traditionally has been what we’ve relied on for autonomous routines, in the 2023 season, Choreo began making its rise, a software that could optimize the path far more efficiently. While we made several paths with it, we were unable to figure out event markers, and positions in the path where commands could be added into the path. This was similar to our auto routines in the 2022 season, before the huge PathPlanner update. Our paths had to be broken up, with commands added in individually, each section of the path recorded as an index number to put together afterward. This year, autos were easier to create as commands could be written separately and referenced within the actual path just by writing the name. Choreo, no matter how quickly it optimized the path, would be disadvantageous if we couldn’t figure out event markers, which started this fall project. We tested and were able to get event markers to function within Choreo paths. Yet running them compared to PathPlanner, there wasn’t much difference in execution, merely a UI preference. We began researching to see which would be the best option to switch to in the coming season, as Choreo was relatively new and somewhat buggy. We discovered another big PathPlanner update, which included several new [...]

During the 2024  fall season for Iron Claw Robotics, team 972, we began driver training much earlier than in previous years. We started the process in mid/late September to give new and returning students a chance to try out our last year's competition robot, Vivace. Although initial attempts to provide time for students to get accustomed to the robot did not succeed due to technical issues with tape strength, wheels, and an inconsistent area to drive, improvements in field setup meant that with each practice, we were able to get more and more time to drive. In mid-October, we decided that we were ready to have driver tryouts and set a date for the 27th of October. For driver tryouts, we brought out each student who wanted to become the driver one at a time to complete certain tasks in front of a group of evaluators consisting of the team captains. These tasks included weaving through cones, driving in circles while keeping the robot pointed at a target, driving in a straight line, and driving in figure eight. Throughout these tests, the students were timed and penalized if they hit either one of the cones being used to make the course or the foam balls at the edge of the field. Once the tryouts were done the captains reviewed [...]