Week 5 Update:
Here’s what our subteams have been up to:
Design:
We had our Critical Design Review; this is some of the things we discussed:
The intake and indexer are both on the same two plates, placed at the front of the robot with them at opposing sides. They consist of PVC rollers sprayed on with flex seal or some other grip in order to allow for the note to traverse the pathway. Once it reaches the end, the note will make it onto the arm.
The arm is an interesting design. Unlike arms from past years which consist of a strong and compact arm made with metal tubes, ours will be made from two big plates, with rollers in between to act as the end of the indexer, with rollers and belts to move the note to where the shooter is.
The shooter, once placed on the robot is angled from the arm itself, which allows for the note to be shot into the speaker at the arm’s resting position. The shooter consists of two big rollers that will spin to shoot the note.
And finally, the climber is made of multiple thermocarbonate legs, that once are spring loaded, stick upwards 33" to reach the chain. The climber is controlled with a winch, that will spin clockwise or counterclockwise to allow for retracting and deploying the climber with one motor.
Over the past week, design finished the full first iteration of the robot in CAD.
Hardware: Our primary robot intake finished and attached, and our secondary robot intake is near completion in manufacturing. Climber 1 manufacturing is finished and ready for assembly. Hardware has been working on building a new robot cart, so far the old one has been disassembled.
Electronics: We wired a practice drivebase and started wiring our competition drivebase. We ran into an issue where our cancoders were calling on the wrong set of motor controllers on the practice bot but that has been rectified. We anticipate having the final drivebase fully wired in the middle of next week.
Software: 4131’s software team has been busy getting code done for all of our subsystems, as well has creating and perfecting commands that enable the use of April-tags and note recognition. We’ve been tuning and adding autons, and troubleshooting some driver station issues. We’re proud of all our progress!
^^ Our GoToAmp Command uses Gyro and Vision based Pose Estimation to line up automatically with the amp at the press of a button.
^^Our GoToNote Command uses the Google Coral and Limelight Note Model to detect notes, center on them, and drive towards them.
Media:
Media has been working on our Impact and Woodie Flowers award submissions. Our team nominated Rob Wenzel, longtime hardware/design mentor and well-loved member of the team. He’s worked with 4131 for seven years now, and we’re immensely grateful for his presence and support.
In terms of impact, we’re closing in on the finish line. We’ve established a template for our handout and modernized its design from previous years. This season, we leaned into black as our primary color and. bright shades of green as our secondary one. In line with our branding, we’ve also made an emphasis on bold lines and shapes.
The Impact essay is on track to be finished by this Wednesday. For the most part, this year’s essay is a straightforward update of last year’s with a few edits to better reflect what our team wants to express.
Our impact video is a voiceover-style video with music and is currently about 3/4ths edited. We’ve also taken the extra step of captioning the video in the name of accessibility as well as to mitigate the inevitable A/V issues that come up at comps.
Thanks for checking in with our team! Let us know if you have any questions on what we’ve done so far! - Akash
