Build Season Review

So now that the robots are being shipped in less than 24 hours, it’s time to review how well we have accomplished the goals that we have set out at the beginning of the six weeks.

I know for 237, we wanted a strong robot that could pick up balls on the floor, spit them into the side goals as well as consistently shoot. As of tonight (last work night on the robot) we could consistently pick up balls and shoot into side goals. We’re having some problems with our conveyor system, but nothing a few tweaks at the first regional won’t fix. Our robot can get 90%+ accuracy shooting into the goals from a range of positions, however there are some “dead spots”. Shooting on the fly was initially a “wishlist goal” (as opposed to a “necessary goal”) and is still on the wishlist. It’s not completely out of the picture, however, so it may become a reality.

How has your teams finished robot compared to your goals?

Well, we are still waiting for our very first test drive :ahh: We were 12 lbs over. So the conveyor had to go. We’ll be working on our human shooting. The good thing is that we have a very good 180 degree turret, something that many teams don’t.

We may do an overhaul at the regional to get the conveyor back, but it would involve going to a 2 motor single speed drive (not optimal).

Saturday night, before the scrimmage, we found out we were 20+ lbs overweight with our shooter, so Sunday morning, we made a decision of losing that, keeping our 4 motor 2 speed drivesystem, our collector, and just going for corner goals. It was a major decision since we spent quite a bit of time on the shooter and designing it and the feeder for it, but we feel it was a better decision than losing the two big cim motors, all of our pneumatics, single speed in low drivesystem, and drilling LOTS of speedholes. We did the first drive test last night and we’re really happy with it, but we’re still not done yet though.

I can’t talk about it right now. Ask me again in June.

our robot isn’t as good as we predicted (obviously), but it can shoot, top and buttom
and it can collect a few balls, the robot is about the same as we wanted it
but 40% less, in just about every aspect (shooting speed\capacity etc.)

I hope it will be good, one thing I can say, our baby is pretty tough

“Build Season Review” , what an odd title, its seems to suggest that we are supposed to be done? Hey wait a second… :ahh: :ahh: :ahh:

Our robot has turned out pretty close to what we hoped to have. We can load balls from the ground and shoot them into the center goal from a rotating turret. The only thing we really don’t like about it right now is that we have a somewhat slow rate of fire (less than one ball per second).