Aerial Assist--Perspective from a low-resource team

[Canon reeves]

That's great! I agree with everyone else, look at the game, strategy will be vital so spend time working on yours, driver practice, and a lot of it! Improve and debug everything you can, break everything early so you can know how to fix it and where week points are. See what you can make better! Great job to your team!!

[Joseph Franke]

I like the idea of the Knee joint. The only thing I would be worried about is interference from another robot and the joint being jostled into firing unintentionally.

You didn't mention it in your post, but CAD gives your team a good way to keep everything documented instead of just hand drawings. It may be too late for this season to use it, but it's very useful for a team. It lets one check out the geometry without having to be in the robotics room.

I love the fun attitude you guys have to the game, but keep in mind, part of the challenge is to figure out the best way to play the game, theory crafting. Like how many cycles can we get off, is it worth doing this if it only gives us so many points. One of the mentors who just came into our club is there to replace our chief strategic mentor. [The new mentor is a manager at a contracting corp, he gave the past mentor a job. That job led to another one in Oregon, across the country. The new mentor felt he should fill the role since he helped move the other out of the local ares].

To each team their own, but I know many on my team who love analyzing the game to no end and finding an optimal way to win. If you guys just want to build crazy stuff, that's all good too. But why not both? haha

Do you have a link to your 30pt climber, i'd love to see it?

[Alex.q]

So, as my team has asked me to ask CD, what next? What innovative features has your team come up with to make their robots better, and how can a team, like mine right now, build something else? We've already got a launcher/pickup/blocker and we don't know what to do next. We've considered a new drive (swerve or just a fast, shifting 6wd), but we can't afford it or justify it. The kit drive is pretty darn good.

You design your shooter to have variable range/arcs so that you could shoot more vertical for the truss and a flat trajectory for scoring in the goal. Just be careful that your "improvements" don't make the robot lose its current functionality.

[Bulah!]

Congrats!!! It's really awesome that yall are making sure great progress!!
Here's my input on what yall you be doing
Yall might want to have driver tryouts since yall have the extra time. By doing tryouts, you know who you want on your drive team, and then you have them practice until the wheels fall off of the robot
Don't stop brainstorming! Every time your team is together, have them take another crack at bringing up a new idea to make the bot even better.
I hope yall do well!! It's always promising to see other teams so far along in the process

[Trey178]

Dear Mr. magnets,

Upon reading your story I could not help but draw some similarities to the team I came from (and now mentor). Now I want to share my perspective as well.

My high school sophomore year ('03-'04) was the season the team finally moved out of our founding sponsor's basement and into a new build space. A decade later our shop has a mass of hand tools, 2 drill presses, a vertical and horizontal band saw, a chop saw, a circular saw (for our practice field), a vice, an air powered rivet gun and a compressor to operate it.

Though what we can create in shop sounds very limited, most of the time it's all we ever need! If it's not enough we have the support of our engineering mentors who have access to better equipment at work. As an FRC alumnus my experience has shown me that it's not what tools you have, it's how well you use them. Our last 2 drive bases were nothing but 1"x1" square aluminum tubing held together by pop rivets. Heck our 6-wheel tank drive from last season was one of/the best drive train I have seen from our students.

It also sounds like the students you mentor understand how important the kit bot can be. With a drive base assembled and running in less than a day, they can put their focus on the other features of their machine. The coaches and adult mentors of the Enforcers agree, if students learn and apply the engineering process, it won't matter how well your robot performs in the end. They'll have gained experience to use for future seasons and beyond. Seeing this process in action today is a big reason why I stick around to mentor the team that gave me so much valued wisdom.

In a nutshell, if the students put forth the effort, it will always be worth the failures. Make sure they keep at it.

[Kevin Leonard]

First of all- color me impressed that you're done at such an early rate. Using the kitbot and being smart about your mechanisms like your team seems to be doing is a great way to finish early and get in driver practice.

I would recommend you try to find some practice space and really test what you can do. How fast can you complete a cycle on your own?
Build two more kitbots to practice doing assists with if you have the resources.
See the exact range of your mechanisms, see what they can do that might be unexpected.

Last year we built our robot to shoot 3's from in front of the pyramid, we discovered through some practicing and trying different things that when our shooter was in the "up" retracted position, we could shoot into the pyramid goal, which gave us another option when cycling under heavy defense.

Really knowing your robot's capabilities inside and out can give you a HUGE lead on the competition at your first regional, and even throughout the season.

Maybe improve your mechanisms further. Fine-tune the shooter to get a larger sweetspot, improve your catching abilities, etc.

I hope you guys have an awesome season, because you seem to be off to a great start.

[Bongle]

This should keep your mechanical team happy:
1) Drive it like you stole it until it breaks*
2) Do a failure analysis, redesign/remanufacture the broken component, or put into place a procedure that will detect the failure pre-match.
3) Goto 1.

You're probably correct that many other teams are at the same spot you are, and will now be iterating their designs to make them faster, more reliable, and more effective. Simply having a robot that can do the game task won't be enough. You've got a fantastic chance to build a 6th or 7th version of your bot by ship day. That should keep your mechanical guys busy.


*"Breaks" and the associated fixes can mean many things:
1) Did the driver screw up? Maybe your control software is too confusing and needs adjustment.
2) Did the robot munch its own part? Maybe you need sensors to prevent that from happening, or you should design the part to be less likely to wreck itself
3) Did a part simply break? Time for a redesign or beefing-up of that part.
4) And of course, you can simply redefine success. Can your robot pick the ball up 10 times in a minute? Change your requirement to 15, and see what needs to be done (driver training? pickup redesign? different ball-approach tactics?) to get your effectiveness up to that level.
5) Did a normal wear component break? How easy was it to replace? Could you design the robot to have greater access to that part?
6) Was something forgotten before a test session and delayed the start of the driving? Make some checklists or maybe even have the robot software self-check that everything is present and working.
7) Are there areas of the field that your robot won't be able to pick up the ball, like corners or in the open field? You could change the pickup to make it more effective in those areas. Also, see [4].
8) Can your catcher catch a ball thrown blindly (a human could throw it backwards over their head) 100% of the time?

[RonnieS]

Our team works our a classroom and have very similar situations regarding machining. What we have learned is that we need to build within our limits but still somewhat custom just takes careful practice. We manage to have a decent robot, at least from the past couple years. We love to bend 1x1 tubing for framing and mechanisms....its very hard but takes very little resources btw, a good 2 axis vise for a drill press makes a world of difference!