prototypes

[ns3517]

During build season does your team build a prototype first? Around what week are your prototypes usually done and you start building the real bot?

[GeeTwo]

For 2014 Aerial Assist, we built a prototype robot with a wooden frame (nicknamed "Woody". It was working around week three or four, and we began on the real aluminum robot, "Buzz". We continued to use Woody for driver practice after bag and tag.

The past two years, we have adapted our drive platform from the KoP chassis, building two each year. As such, we no longer do a full-robot prototype, but we DO prototype our manipulators. This gets us through things a bit faster; for 2016 Stronghold, we built four different pickups and at least five different launchers in an ever-improving spiral of reliability and robustness.

[TheModMaster8]

On my former team we would start by reading the rules then move onto what we wanted to do. From that point on the same day we would start prototyping different ideas, we would finish at about the 2 week mark, (Keep in mind that the chassis was being CAD'ed during the 2 week)

The team I'm currently on, we spent the first week pouring over the rules thoroughly, and the team decided on the kind of mechanism we wanted wanted to prototype at the start of week two,

Personally I believe a mixture of the two would pan out the best. Spend the first (and maybe second?) day thoroughly reading the rules, then prototype for the next week or two. Hope this helps.

[Edxu]

On 610, we've traditionally done 2-3 days of strategy discussion to create a list of needs and wants for our robot (eg this year: cross low bar, cycle fast, cross 6/9 defense options quickly and hang to name a few).

After that, we brainstorm prototypes as a group, then split off and work on creating/testing the prototypes. Each Friday this build season, we held a review on the past week's work, slowly cutting down the number of prototypes until we arrive at something that we're happy with.

This process takes varying amounts of time depending on the complexity/difficulty of the design. In 2015, we were prototyping basically until Week 4 IIRC, prototyping drivetrains (don't do this ever) and our cangrabber.

In 2016, we found that prototyping took far too long in 2015, and we prototyped for around the first two weeks, then we finished the robot by week 4 to get extra driver practice.

tl;dr: Prototypes done this year by the start of week 3, robot manufactured by the end of week 4

[saikiranra]

254 released their build blogs from 2013 and 2014 (and in the past have released more but I couldn't find them in my quick search). They detail their entire process through build season, including their prototyping.

2013 build blog

2014 build blog

[Darkseer54]

I will highly recommend watching this video. Mr. Junkin gives a bunch of great tips as to how to easily prototype in general, and the advice from Adam Heard and Allen Gregory is extremely helpful as well. Definitely worth watching and learning from.

[nirmatt_1690]

This year in 1690, after reading the full game manual, we made a list of all the requirements and specification for the robot.

Then, we've came up with few possible options for every system, and we build a working prototype for most of them.
After testing every concept, we've voted for every different systems (drive train, intake and shooting) and we build a full prototype robot, with all the different systems, as you can see in this video: https://youtu.be/H49_6WVDT98.

The prototype robot let us test the program + gave the driver some practice weeks before the real competition robot was finished.

[M217]

We do our best to have a rough idea of the design by day 3 or 4 (for example, by day 4 of this year's build season, we'd agreed on a low bar robot with a pneumatic swerve drive, active intake, and high goal shooter). For the next week or so, we have half the team prototyping and half building a preliminary chassis. After that, the prototyping dies down a little; we reduce that group to about a few students and a single mentor (but they continue prototyping up through week 4).

This system has given us a lot more confidence in our designs, since we have the opportunity to try out a number of different iterations and make objective statements about each, while still leaving us with enough time to finish the bot/ drive practice/ program autonomous.

[Gravity]

We made a prototype robot so our programming team could work alongside the build team. It wasn't nearly as complete as our final robot, but it was a good resource for training drivers.

[qscgy]

Generally, we build prototypes out of 80/20 for optimizing geometry and proof of concept, usually finishing by the middle of week 3. Once that's done, we may build a Gen. II prototype for more refinement before building the final, usually finishing that by the end of week 4 or middle of week 5, at which point we take a few (5-7) days to mount everything to the robot frame. I know that in 2014, we mounted our prototypes to a preseason drive frame and used that to test our robot design.

Elaborating on prototypes, we generally have at least 2 different groups working on different designs for the same element (e.g. defense manipulator). Each group does their own proof of concept, and then we decide which design to use by the end of week 2 or so. Since the proof of concept is generally a mostly functional prototype, we can start working on the next iteration of the mechanism pretty quickly.

[Toatekua]

Our original prototype this year was made out of a floor cart, 2-by-4s, duct tape, and 80/20.

I'll need to find a picture of it to truly understand.

It's always a good idea to test ideas before actually cutting it out, to avoid mistakes that waste material. You can make mistakes in wood as much as you want, but once you make an error that wastes a perfectly good, expensive piece of metal, ehhh I think you see.