The 2016 FIRST Team 3807 Build Thread!

[Thromgord]

Well, here we are again. It's always such a pleasure.

Last year, I did a similar one of these build threads. It was fun (even though I didn't update it enough). This year, more of the same.

I think it would be nice if we were very transparent in our design process, because (1) We lack any really secret, unique plans that other people haven't already talked about and (2) it seems as if the good teams of CD are much better at finding problems with our designs than we are. Speaking of which, your help would be greatly appreciated.

So, this is more of a "here's where we're going" than a "here's CAD models" or "here's our completely-built robot." That'll change in the coming weeks though...

Without further ado:

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The FIRST Team 3807 Build Thread!
A tale of inside jokes and weird design ideas.
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When the challenge was announced, we were terrified. Pretty much everyone thought that we would be incapable of doing anything. Except, I should note, for the freshmen. They were pretty okay with the challenge, actually (perhaps because they didn't realize what a weird amalgamate of stuff it was). If they, too, had descended to the depths of screaming and tugging-of-hair, then we would all be lost. I'm really glad that didn't happen. Please give the freshmen a golf clap, minimum.

We rapidly decided to build a robot capable of surmounting the obstacles while carrying/pushing a boulder. We also concluded that climbing the tower would be fun. This led to an interesting design question: How can we make a robot with a lot of ground clearance, less than 1'4" high, and capable of carrying a six-foot arm?

After lots of careful deliberation, we decided to mount an All-Purpose arm on the robot. This arm, which has a "shoulder" joint and two "elbow" joints, would not only be dexterous enough to lower the drawbridge, raise the portcullis, and open the Sally Port but also be long enough, when extended vertically, to reach the bar from which our robot would hang! Oh, and with any luck, the arm could be used to trap a ball for transport across some obstacles as well.

Then we debated whether or not this design would be legal. There's the chance that such an arm could get outside of the frame perimeter, violating G13 and R3. Even though the robot's code could forbid this from occurring, the design might not pass inspection. (This is still a thing that we're worried about. There's a separate thread for it here, actually.) Other concerns include motors used, bulkiness, and sheer size of the design.

Other things we're thinking about right now include the drive train (we're thinking of doing Curiosity-rover-style suspension with pivots). I personally want the robot to look rather dragon-like, as per this year's challenge theme, but that's barely on the radar at this point.

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I'll end with two inside jokes. One came about when our team decided to make our robot look and function like BB-8 (hey, it might do a good job getting over terrain obstacles!) We were then thinking about a robotic arm and stated that it would be nice if we could somehow remove someone's arm to put on the robot (given, it would probably be valued at over $400 as per the manual's description). Then we were thinking of grafting said human arm onto BB-8. And then someone drew a picture of a BB-8 with a burly, muscular arm attached to the side. And... well, to make a long story short, picture a BB-8 droid with muscular arms and legs coming out of it. At the rate things are going, that's probably going to be our team standard.

Other inside joke comes from one of our co-captains, Sam. He said something along the lines of,
"The best way to win is not to lose."
And that, my friends, is the best advice we have for this week.

Thank you for reading this all the way through (or, if you just skipped to the bottom: no! that's unfair!) I'll be back in a couple of days, hopefully with a shorter post. I may update this post with a picture of the muscular BB-8, by the way...

Let me know what you think, and as always, stay awesome.

Best,
Thromgord