Week 1 Update
Kickoff Recap (1/7)
The ALChemists were excited to join in the global excitement over the release of a new FRC game concept this past Saturday. Per team tradition, the ALChemists were treated to a wonderful pancake breakfast while eagerly counting down the minutes to Kickoff. After the game had been revealed, team Mentors and Coaches met with the parents to discuss the agenda for this season. Because we have a shorter build season than in previous years (Utah Regional, Week 1), it was crucial to establish a more defined schedule to meet our deadlines. Last year, the team struggled to make it to our local event on time and arrived late on Check-In day. We have prioritized completing all necessary parts of the bot by February 11, as outlined by our team’s Gantt Chart (more on that later). This will allow a grace period of approximately three weeks to make adjustments or revisions to the robot. In addition, this period will also allow us to dedicate time to training a Drive Team and Scout Team for competition.
Engineering
The Engineering group primarily discussed how to design a device that would pick up cones and cubes. We felt an arm mechanism would allow us more flexibility to pick up and maneuver cones, particularly to the middle and upper nodes of the grid. Our team liked the idea of designing a hybrid device that could pick up a cone (in nearly any orientation) or cubes, so we designed a prototype device that we hope to improve upon in future iterations.
Intake Arm, Iteration 1
Our first design consisted of a 2x1 grid of inversed tennis ball halves on wooden dowels attached to a wooden board. Our hope with this iteration was to create a gripping device that could be adjusted with pneumatics to pick up the desired game piece. A shortcoming we quickly noticed with this version was that to move a cone into an upright position, we would have to flex the gripping device multiple times so that it would slowly fall into the correct position in between the tennis balls. This could cost valuable time on the playing field and was a component we immediately sought to improve upon.
Video of the Arm (v1.0) in action: YouTube Video
Picture of the Arm (v1.0) being tested:
Intake Arm, Iteration 2
The second iteration of our intake arm was much like the first. However, we replaced the wooden dowels holding the inverted tennis balls with a stack of ball bearings and threaded a screw through the whole stack to hold the tennis ball in place. Adding the bearings would prevent the Drive Team from flexing the grabbing device multiple times to bring the cone into an upright position. This left the job of righting the cone entirely to gravity, which we found worked much faster (and more reliably) than our previous iteration. We also tested grabbing the cone from a variety of positions, including on its side (facing to the left or right), on its side (facing away from or towards the arm), right side up, and upside down (leaning against a wall or sloped surface). In each instance, the cone successfully navigated to an upwards position without any force or influence from the user.
Drivetrain
Our team has routinely used the West Coast Drive in our competition robots in the last few years. The two-speed gearbox allows us to move quickly across the field in high gear and also provides precision and lots of defensive power in low gear. We have decided to use this drive layout again this year because we have become so familiar with the system that we can produce effective results in a shorter time period. We toyed with the idea of implementing a Swerve Drive, but did not feel we had the time or funds to learn a new system in time for the competition. This week, the Engineering team conducted a Dimensional Analysis of our planned intake arm to draw the final design for our Drivetrain, which we plan to fully machine and build by next week’s meeting.
Programming
This week, the Programming team spent a great deal of time updating all the software applications to their respective 2023 versions. When not updating software, they worked on updating and simplifying our website, which has needed some organization for a few years. They also began researching and building an Autonomous Balancing Method using a CTRE Pigeon 2.0.
A team of rogue Engineers also joined the Programming team in building a wooden replica of the Charge Station this week, which we will complete tomorrow. This charge station will allow us to test our autonomous balancing methods and (hopefully) get them smoothed out in no time. In the future, we will include notable segments of code in this section, but we don’t have much to update on other than the previously mentioned items.
Scheduling
In the past, the ALChemists have struggled to maintain a schedule. To combat this, the team leadership drafted a Gantt Chart to keep us on track this year. So far, the team is ahead of schedule and operating quicker than in years past.
