Research and Development in the Offseason

[Bcahn836]

Research and Development in the Off-season

In one of our team meetings research and development was discussed with the all of the students, and the it was decided that in the offseason the team wanted to find out more information in the following areas.

Drive train - 2 wheel drive Vs 4 wheel drive and Omni wheels
Pneumatics- function and uses
Structure- stress strength and uses
Command and Control- Programming
Math and Physics- what would be used during the 6-week build.

Based on this list of what the students wanted to know more about the mentors came up with this list to cover all of those things within the next 9 weeks. The team would go into its sub teams and the following would be research and development.

Dead Reckoning- Develop software, test & determine accuracy (program flexibility)
Drive straight button- Software to make bot go in straight line
Two Speed Transmission- Build and test prototype
Holonomic Drive system- Hardware & software prototype 4 omni wheel system
Larger stronger Omni wheel- Build Prototype
Pneumatic arm position control- Using last year’s bot develop a position control design.

With these projects the mentors will meet all of the students needs in there areas of concern. Using structure in design of drive systems, arm systems and using math in all of the projects.

I created this thread for many reasons.
For the community of Chief Delphi to share information on research and development, share known information on different subjects, to give other teams ideas on projects for offseason R&D.
To be able to share information between teams is a part of FIRST Robotics. "Oh our team has tried that and here are some of the issues we had with it"
This thread would be a great place for teams to share their ideas for reasonable R&D and make helpful comments to other teams about their ideas.

[JVN]

These may help out a bit, in your quest for knowledge about some of the topics you mentioned:

http://team229.org/resources/15/
This is the series of seminars given by Team 229 last fall as a means of bringing our students up to speed for the competition season.

http://team229.org/resources/17/
This is a presentation requested to cover "overall mechanical design - (excluding drivetrain)" for a FIRST robot. It was presented to a 2005 Rookie Team in the fall of 2004. This presentation also compiles information from a variety of sources.

Your mileage may vary.
Good Luck,
John