1923 Cheesecake Experience

[SJaladi]

I'd like to start off by thanking 148, 1114, and 900 for being amazing alliance partners. We had an awesome run and it was a pleasure to work with you guys.

Our cheesecake experience started Friday when both 148 and 1114 came by our pit to measure our robot and identify places where we could cut weight to accommodate their cheesecake. Overall it seemed like we were in the running as a candidate, however, it was no sure thing as it all depends on how alliance selections go.

Saturday morning, both teams came back again to take more measurements. This time 148 brought the base of their canburglar, "catwoman", to check mounting options. After alliance selections I got back to the pit ASAP to meet 148's mechanical crew along with my mechanical crew, and we transported tools and robot to 148's pit to begin the weight reduction process. It was a very intense process, as we had to be out on the field for matches in a little less than 2 hours. Additionally we had to get reinspected in this time also. The first order of business was to remove the superstructure that supports the elevator and the tusks we use for bin manipulation. We also removed the solenoid used for the tusks to save more weight. Once we reduced weight we worked on moving our electrical board up about a foot to make space to mount catwoman. At this point we realized we did a little bit too good of a job of securing the board. We had rivets under our Talon SRX's which were bolted down. Rather than unbolting all of them, we used a flathead screwdriver as a chisel and sheared them off. In the meantime other members of our mechanical crew moved our compressor, remounted our power switch and worked on adding additional speed controllers.

Once we cleared up space we realized we didn't have enough space to fit catwoman in her original form. The mechanism that folded up the arms using a winch and a linkage was too bulky, so we made the decision to switch to pneumatics to fold it up. At this point we had to start moving to the dome floor so as we rolled MKI:X over we walked backwards in front of it to finish fixing the new electronics. Once we got to our alliance pit, we began the process of actually mounting catwoman. We secured her base to our robot first with several bolts and then began adding the burglar arms and the piston linkage at the same time. At this point we realized that we lost our solenoid and wasted precious time searching for it. We finally found it and got everything mounted up. At this point we were being told to go to que for our first QF match, however we had yet to deploy code, test, and get inspected.

Fortunately 1114 and 148 were able to hold their own in QF's and we deployed code and tested the arms to make sure all the pistons and motors fired in the right direction. At this point we rushed over to inspection which was all the way across the dome and by the time we got back we were sent straight to que for our first SF match. We all held our breath as the MC counted down the start of the match and we were ecstatic to catwoman hit the mark and burgle both cans. After that match and each match there after, we decreased the time of various actions in the code to cut down the time to burgle to a bare minimum.

We spent the rest of division elims learning from 148 how to properly maintain catwoman and prepare for the even more intense pit environment that would come with Einstein.

During Einstein QF's we continued to speed up our auton to the point where we were no longer comfortable going any faster. Other than this most of the maintenance was routine until one of catwoman's arms broke while contesting a RC. We rushed MKI:X back to the pit and frantically took the broken module off and replaced it with a new one and wired it up. Then we rebuilt the broken module so that we had a new spare ready to go. After the first break we began to routinely inspect the arms after each match so as to identify any potential fracture points before a failure. At this point it ended up not being needed as we were eliminated before another arm broke.

Overall the experience was amazing. I know my students were a bit intimidated by the intensity at first as most of this work was done in about two hours, but eventually they were right in there keeping pace with the students from 148 and together we managed to pull it off. For me personally this was one of the most rewarding experiences as I got to see my students get inspired by the teams they look up to. Now they have even more drive to do better in the future, and I'd be lying if I was to say that I wasn't inspired also. These teams have amazing programs and to be able to see how they operate up close in the heat of elims is a privilege not many teams get, and to get to work with them and collaborate on as huge of an endeavour as rebuilding the back half of our robot was an even greater privilege.

P.S. Thanks 148 for letting us keep catwoman!

[Brian Maher]

We're really happy to see 1923's success on and off the field. You guys have always been a pleasure to work with. That is some really inspiring teamwork, and it resulted in one heck of a can-grabber. I've enjoyed watching the evolution of MKI:X from being one of my favorite landfill bots at Mount Olive to a strong human player bot to an Einstein-class canburglar.

I wish we were nearly as cool an alliance captain as 148