Almost two weeks ago, YETI Robotics competed in the Week 3 competition at the UNC Asheville district event at the Sherrill Center and Kimmel Arena. We got pretty lucky, considering our robot wasn’t at its highest performing potential until the end of the day.
Throughout the competition, our issues have been starting early. Our most common, recurring issue was communication issues between our driver station and robot. This was due to electromagnetic interference, which we fixed by moving the radio further away from the Switch and RoboRio.
By Qualification match two, we were swapping a whole swerve module! The side of our robot was run over by another bot, breaking the module. We had a curved, broken bottom swerve plate that deflected a quarter-inch where the corner with the bolt had been cracked off, which holds the swerve module together. The module was unsalvageable. Consequently, during matches, we would position our robot against the speaker most of the time, collecting and scoring any missed notes to help our alliance gain points since we couldn’t drive smoothly.
We temporarily fixed this using JB Weld on the bottom of the swerve plate. We were able to speed up the weld setting by heating it to 80-90 degrees Celsius, reducing the cool-down time from four hours to just about one hour. This repair lasted the entirety of the first day of Asheville.
We replaced the swerve module during Asheville with a spare V1 Azmuth Pinion module spare emergency parts that were brought from Charlotte. Later, after Asheville, during our general meetings, we replaced it with a V2 Azmuth Pinion Swerve module to maintain the uniformity of all four modules.
Our robot’s performance became more efficient after the last couple of matches. However, the swerve module was still dragging due to software and code issues. We weren’t able to reach our top speed. Our robot reached its top speed with a high, efficient performance by qualification Match 41, our last match of the day.
We soon realized that along with our team, other teams using vision had a similar misalignment issue during the first couple of qualification matches. This caused our robot to aim higher than we anticipated compared to where we should’ve been scoring, causing frequent bounce-outs.
Most of our speaker shots were the drive team eyeballing the appropriate pivot angle to attempt to score.
Other problems occurred during the competition. When the left front side of our bot was run over, the solder on our CANcoder wires broke off, making us unable to drive. When this occurred, we overloaded the robot’s main breaker, which failed, turning off our robot completely. We fixed this by installing linear WAGOs as a quick fix for our CANcoder before re-crimping them later in the day and installing a new breaker.
By our next match, we were able to fix the drivetrain so it could perform at a proper functionality, as we made about 10-12 cycles alone in that match.
The main breaker was removed, and our robot was completely functioning. However, we had recurring issues all day. Initially, the driver station malfunctioned, messing up our subsystem operations because the drivetrain had received random inputs from the driver station. We soon realized that this was not a code issue but that the robot was getting overloaded. Many subsystems of our robot were turned off, causing us to have to do things manually.
During our last four matches of Day 1, after each Autonomous period, our robot would be stagnant for the first 10 seconds of the match, after which we would run an autonomous routine in driver’s mode and switch to teleoperation mode. This was due to complex calculation issues in the teleoperation period that overloaded the CPU. We fixed this by commenting out the code.
Despite the unfortunate turn of events at Asheville last weekend regarding our robot, we got back on track by Day 2 of the competition. After completing qualification matches, we ranked 4th out of the 28 teams. During the playoffs, we became a part of Alliance 3 as Alliance Captains and partnered with Team 587 Hedgehogs and Team 6932 S.M.A.R.T. With persistence and perseverance, our alliance made it to the finals, where we played against Alliance 2 with Capitan team 8727 Glitch 2.0, 9496 LYNK, and 9297 BOGOBOTS. Our alliance ended as a 2nd-place Finalist! Fantastic job to all teams!
YETI won Impact! We are so grateful as each of our YETI members put in their all to make this happen. A huge thank you to all of our mentors, sponsors, and FIRST family for making this all possible with your unwavering support!!
Concluding this past weekend, YETI Robotics competed at the Mecklenburg district Competition at Palisades High School. Those who have seen us at competition, similarly to Asheville, we also performed pretty well towards the end of the competition.
Most of our recurring issues were the same as those from Asheville, such as the communication between our driver station and robot wasn’t as efficient.
During match 8 of the qualification matches, we had a problem with our shooter, specifically the pivot, as a Kraken took more voltage than normal. At match 18, a 2x4 wood block from our robot cart obstructed our intake, so we played defense for most of the match. By the next match, we had the intake working and ensured the wood blocks were securely duct-taped to our cart. In match 35, we accidentally drove under the Stage with the elevator extended, which significantly damaged our shooter. Luckily, we had an entirely constructed spare shooter, which we didn’t mount onto our robot until after our following match: Qualification match 39, so we drove around headless!
In this match, we shuttled notes to our alliance partners to help our alliance gain as many points as possible while also playing some defense.
By the end of the qualification matches, YETI Robotics ranked #5 out of the 30 teams. The next day came alliance selection, to which we were a part of Alliance 3, where we became partners with Alliance Capitan Team 3196 SPORK and Team 1225, The Gorillas.
Our performance improved during the semi-finals, but unfortunately, some issues persisted. During playoff match 2, our Beam Brake, as our shooter, was hit from the stage. The connection to the RoboRio under our Rio covers had been disconnected; luckily, nothing had to be replaced, but we had to ensure it was securely plugged in.
Throughout the playoff matches, our shooter was replaced once and had to be repaired numerous times due to it being hit by the stage.
Ultimately, our Alliance ended in third place, as our last match was Playoffs Match 13. Great job to all the teams! Additionally, YETI walked out with the Team Sustainability Award! Huge shoutout to everyone who made this possible!
Thank you for reading, and feel free to ask any questions!
Have a great one!