FRC40 presents Mini FRC:Aim High!

gren737 · #1 17-03-2006, 10:06

This year FRC team 40 (intelitek and Trinity HS) took on a new approach to the brainstorming and prototyping process for the game. The students at Trinity HS used a beta version of intelitek's new robotics curriculum called REC (Robotics Engineering Curriculum) to learn about Vex and easyC before the FRC season began. This allowed them to build sophisticated robots and write autonomous programs very quickly for prototyping this year's Aim High game.

On day one we held the typical team meeting/brainstorming session. However this year we decided to try to build 1/3 vex models of our ideas. We came up with 6 unique robot designs, and broke our team into groups to build these robots. Some of the ideas were low goal scorer with ground pickup, high goal scorer human loader, etc. We had swerve drives, holonomic drives, tank drives, everything.

Each team was given a couple of days to build and program their 'bots and then we competed.

We didn't know it at the time, but the mini competitions we had in that first week of build season replicated actual "real" gameplay almost identically. It showed how much defense would be played against the shooters, the importance of autonomous, etc.

The other great aspect was the EVERY student on the team was involved, EVERY student learned the rules and got to build something. When it came time to start designing and building the big robot a unique thing happened. Some of the older students broke off to work on the big robot while the other, less experienced students continued to develop their vexbots because we could not get them to stop.

The vex motors weren't capable of firing the balls, so they figured out how to wire in a victor speed controller to the vex controller and ran fisher price motors for the ball shooters. One team had such a complex robot that they had to run a second vex controller as a slave because they used more than 8 PWMs.

We worked with the organizers of the Hartford regional to put on a demo to share our idea and experiences with the rest of the FIRST community. It was a great hit and we're currently working with FIRST to try and bring it to nationals. If anyone would like more information on how to build a 1/3 scale mini FRC Vex bot, please contact us. The more the merrier.

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