Designing to Improve

[T^2]

The robot we had playing on Einstein shared only its drivetrain with the robot we entered in our first regional.

At Central Valley Regional, our shooter was a 2-wheeled linear system using BaneBots wheels; our intake was a metal pan with rollers on top. We had a passive 10-point hanger that popped up and engaged when we rammed the pyramid.

By the Sacramento Regional, we had switched the shooter for a single-wheeled, J-hook design using a urethane drive roller. It gave us much more consistency than the previous system, and didn't need to have its wheels replaced all the time. In addition, we changed our hanger to an active system with two beefcake pneumatic cylinders traveling up and down. This was due to the previous system's tendency to get stuck when the back of our frame wedged into the ground.
Side note: at this regional, our shooter began the day not performing up to spec. When testing it, we had run it directly off a battery; when powered through a speed controller, it was much weaker for some reason. Because we live in the same town as the regional's location, we spent Thursday night making a new gearbox for the shooter by hand, incorporating VEXpro gears we had lying around. It worked pretty well, surprisingly.

At Championships, we replaced our pan intake with one that dragged the frisbees along the ground before flipping them into our robot. It gave us much better pickup ability than the previous one while also being sturdier. Despite that, we bent its side plates a couple of times, and had to reinforce it with extra aluminum plate. We also changed our hanger again, this time attaching the hooks to flexible steel rods on top of the cylinders so as to not bend the pistons. Finally, we replaced the shooter gearbox with one that was not made by hand.

tl;dr Constantly iterating our robot made it much, much more competitive over the season.