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Unread 14-06-2016, 08:36
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gerthworm gerthworm is offline
Making the 1's and 0's
FRC #1736 (Robot Casserole)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Jan 2015
Rookie Year: 2015
Location: Peoria, IL
Posts: 57
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Re: How many days do your programmers get with a fully built robot before stop build

Our team structure is the same. It's varied year to year, but what I've found from my 6 total years of doing robotics for various organizations: The robot is never truly finished. No matter how good or professional your other teams are, there is always something to be improved. Presuming people are enthusiastic about perfection, getting the robot for some quality software time is pretty hard.

We found two modes of operation were really useful this year:
1) mini-sprints: In parallel, the robot is constructed, and software is written. Major milestones (drivetrain written, manipulator added, etc.) are marked in software version control. As soon as the robot is mostly functional, there is a joint effort where software loads on a new program, does some tests, makes some observations. As soon as software knows what to do, they get off the robot and give mechanical & electrical a time estimate till the next time they need the robot (5 minutes? 15? an hour?). Mechanical/electrical then do whatever tasks they can in that timeframe, and get back out of the way for software to do their next iteration. Working like this allowed us to make lots of small mechanical tweaks that made a big difference at the end of the day.

2) Shift-based work: For longer software projects, such as tuning shooter/intake sequencing or autonomous routines, Software just needs the robot for a long stretch of time with little interference. These things were accomplished "after-hours" - effectively, non-software teams went home to get some sleep, and software came in later to get done what needed to happen. Most mentors stuck around for the whole time, but this allowed the students not to be super burdened. I'm hoping to improve how we organize this this year with better up-to-the-minute communication of schedule, as a mechanical failure has great potential to hose up pre-set meeting plans.
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