Aerial Assist--Perspective from a low-resource team

[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!