Over the past week, Team 1072 has been working on prototyping various mechanisms, assembling our drivetrain, analyzing the game, and launching our outreach initiatives.
Prototypes
Our first shooter prototype was designed with a pair of worn-down side-by-side Colson wheels acting as flywheels. It had 3” of compression on the note and two sets of Colson wheels (4 total). It was powered by four drills (one for each wheel) and shot about 6 feet.
Our second iteration increased the compression on the previous prototype to 6” and used only one set of Colsons. Instead of machining a new shooter plate, we took the old shooter plate, bandsawed a chunk out of it, and gaff taped it back together. It was Falcon-powered with a 2:1 ratio on one side and a 1:1 ratio on the other. Its max range was about 8 feet.
The third iteration was the same as the second one, but we loosely attached Cat Tongue non-abrasive grip tape on the Colsons to test the effect of higher grip on the shot distance. When the shooter was activated, the tape immediately flung loose, hitting standoffs as it was spun with the wheels. The game piece suffered multiple additional lacerations because of some exposed belts and pulleys, but it shot three times farther than the previous iterations.
Our intake prototype was made with aluminum rollers and silicone tubing. We ran the prototype by hand, which helped iron out the geometry and find places the note was getting stuck. We found that it was nearly impossible to shift the notes left and right, which meant we would have to devise a centralizing mechanism. A lot of dust and dirt over about a day rendered the silicon tubing completely smooth to the touch. However, the prototype’s functionality was not affected by this; it worked just as well as before. To test top-down shooting, we attached a Falcon 500 to the prototype and ran the intake in reverse, feeding the game piece in between the rollers. With about .025” of compression, the note traveled 6 feet.
Progress
We also began assembling our drivetrains. This year we chose to make the switch from SDS MK4 to MK4i modules because they are safer for the Falcons. We bought brand new modules in May and then additional conversion kits in the fall. When putting the swerve modules on the drivetrains, we found that the holes on some of the wheel guard (bottommost) plates were drilled for 8 bolts while the holes on the pulley plate (middle one) were tapped for #10-32. We later realized that this was because MK4i modules ordered before June were fabricated for full #8-32 mounting, with alternating #10-32 holes, but everything since was designed for #10-32, and so mixing parts between swerve modules was leading to the mismatch we saw in the hole sizes. We also found out that the newer MK4i modules had a smaller corner radius than before.
Our electrical team has been hard at work building the field! We will have a finished speaker in the coming days and they will begin working on construction of the amp afterwards.
Strategy
We believe that since most teams will be able to score amp, higher seeded teams will assign amp to lower seeded teams, while scoring in the speaker themselves. Similar to 2023 and 2022, the game gets a lot harder if you don’t have ground pick up, which is important for autons (both from your wing and the centerline), and it can possibly make cycle times shorter by allowing you to pick up stray notes.
The trap will not be necessary for qualification matches however it will be critical in playoffs, especially when the majority of alliance captains already have trap ability themselves. It could end up being the make or break in close matches. Teams getting spotlit is going to be unlikely, similar to the 2022 human player, so the trap will be useful for the ranking point. Harmony and even double harmony will probably be common. During qualifications, a lot of teams won’t get the Ensemble ranking point, which will result in an overall lower ranking scores at regionals.
For our robot, we prioritized its abilities as follows:
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Speaker scoring from range (with align to target and move while shooting)
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Amp
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Ground pickup
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Centerline auton
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2 Onstage climb
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Trap
Outreach
The outreach team kicked off Wonderbots, a 6-7 week course for middle school girls outside of our school at the start of the season. We teach introductory robotics through Lego Spike Prime kits. The first day of Wonderbots was on Jan 13. Our VEX courses (IQ and V5) are still running smoothly. This week, our outreach subteam has started on writing the Impact Award and also started teaching one of the other educational programs, named Wonderbots, that we offer to middle school girls in our community for free of charge. To go into more of the specifics, this program consists of eight classes teaching the students basic programming skills using Spike Prime robots. Here is an example of the curricula we use:
Currently, in regard to our work on the Impact Award and other awards, the outreach team is referencing our previous responses from 2023 and drafting new curated answers which are updated to include the new initiatives we developed this year. For the Dean’s List Award, the triumvirate of presidents is currently in the process of nominating someone or multiple people on our team (more detail about this will come in the next update). The presidents are also working on drafting a Woodie Flowers submission for one of our key mentors.
In parallel, our media/PR subteam is working hard on producing pins in high throughput with updated designs in preparation for competitions, so hopefully we can expect to see some of you at our regional competitions (SAC & MBR) dawning our pins!
Tangentially, the App Development subteam has been extensively working on marketing and onboarding more FRC teams to The Purple Standard and The Purple Warehouse as well as upgrading various analysis features on the scouting app! If you are interested in joining the other 150+ FRC teams around the world in having the powerful ability to share scouting data and analysis, please check out these other threads!