FRC 4272 Maverick Robotics - 2025 Build Thread

Lexeo · January 2, 2025, 1:53pm

About Us

Welcome to the 2025 updates thread for team 4272 - Maverick Robotics! We are based out of McCutcheon High School in Lafayette, IN.

We are proud members of the FIN district and will be competing in the Kokomo (week 3) and Tippecanoe (week 4) events.

Future posts will provide general information and insight into our engineering process, including lessons learned from failures as well as successes. Follow along with our Github and Onshape for live updates. We welcome any feedback and hope other teams can learn from our successes and failures.

We are excited to participate in openalliance for our second season.

Supplier Support

We are sponsored by AndyMark and a part of Team Thrifty, two great Indiana FRC suppliers. We look forward to using many of their great products on our 2025 robot.

Important links

Lexeo · January 3, 2025, 4:59pm

Preseason Projects

One of our big goals this preseason is to keep ourselves more organized so that we can be more efficient, both in the pit and in our robot design.

Road Case Pit Cart

Seems like all the cool kids have developed Road Case style pits, and we decided to follow suit. We believe the added shelving will help us keep things more organized so we can find parts faster. Still working on the finishing touches like shelves, but it has come out very nice. We are excited to use it for the 2025 season.

Onshape link

Configurable Chassis & Bumper Frame

To help speed things up this season, we wanted to make our chassis design automatic. Assuming FIRST doesn’t throw anything crazy at us, our plan is to run the MK4i Swerve module with a grid-patterned tube. The drive train size and bumper location are all configurable, and the bumpers and bumper mounts automatically generate. We have one set of these bumper mounts on order from SendCutSend and plan to test them out early in the season.

Onshape Link

Configurable Spacer

This one is a fairly simple configurable part - but one we find ourselves using a ton. We typically 3D print these out of Duramic PLA Plus. One of the problems we have had is keeping spacers organized. This season we wanted to solve this problem by engraving the spacer with its length, automatically. We can simply import this part every time we need a spacer, set a length and shaft size, and expect it to work.

For spacers less than .25", we have an alternative configuration that engraves bumps into the part. Outward-facing bumps indicate the first decimal place and the inward bumps indicate the second decimal place. For example, the spacer below is .12"

Onshape Link

Preseason Robot

As a fun testing platform, we designed and built a simple Crescendo robot. This served as a fun training activity for our new students. It also let us learn to use the CTRE swerve library.

For the 2025 season, we plan to rebuild this robot into a Kitbot (with swerve) for early programming work.

Code

Onshape Link

Elevator Design Practice

To help train our new CAD students, we worked on designing a cascade elevator with a similar design to our 2023 robot. The design will need some refinement for use on a competition robot, but it was a great exercise to learn to make full robot assemblies.

Onshape Link

Kayli · January 3, 2025, 11:42pm

Preseason Projects (Continued)

Fall Recruitment

One of our goals was to create our new student recruitment materials earlier in the off-season, specifically at the start of summer, instead of waiting until the school year began. By doing this, we could distribute the materials earlier in the school year and have more time to prepare. In addition to hanging flyers around the school, some of our student leaders volunteered to represent our team at the annual freshman orientation event. This allowed incoming freshmen to meet current members, learn about members’ experiences, and ask any questions they might have.

Chili Cook-Off Scholarship Fundraiser

This year, Maverick Robotics hosted the inaugural Chili Cook-Off Scholarship Fundraiser on November 1st, 2024. The goal of the event was to raise funds to assist students who face financial challenges with their season fees. Many students contributed by creating flyers, posters, and signs to promote the event, as well as crafting items such as laser-engraved coasters and CNC-routed cutting boards for a silent auction. The event was a success, and we are already looking forward to hosting our second annual event next fall!

T-Shirt Design

During our preseason, we decided to design the yearly competition t-shirt earlier than usual. Instead of waiting until after the season kickoff, we started the design process right away. Inspired by the season’s theme, REEFSCAPE, our Imagery subteam created over 20 design variants, which were then narrowed down to a final winner. By completing the t-shirt design early, we can place our order sooner during the build season. This allows our design teams to focus on other important tasks, such as creating this year’s button and sticker handouts!

Recycled CRESCENDO Note Wreath

At the end of the fall preseason, our students worked on a fun project where they transformed an old CRESCENDO note into a team-themed wreath for AndyMark’s promotional contest. They used scrap materials found around the shop, along with old crafting supplies that students and mentors contributed. The result was a truly amazing design!

Other Events

Our Imagery subteam has developed a range of promotional items for our events during the preseason, including off-season competitions and dine-to-donate fundraisers. We encourage you to visit our social media pages on Facebook and Instagram to explore the fantastic graphic design work they’ve created for these events. Don’t forget to follow us on all of our social media platforms (see first post for links!), as we’ll be sharing season updates and fun videos throughout the build season.

Eric_Sells · January 9, 2025, 1:43pm

Kickoff Event Structure
For the 2025 season, we ran our Kickoff event similar to last year with one added change: We had each group of students read each section instead of splitting them up. This helped everyone understand each section better. The idea of making no decisions at Kickoff worked well last year, so we did the same this year. After watching the game reveal, most of our mentors separate from our students. The mentors take this time to talk freely with one another and to start field build. Our students were split into groups, trying to arrange rookies with veterans, to read each section of the manual pertinent to how to play the game. This year, that was Sections 5-7 and 10. Then we dive into how robots might play the game, but not necessarily how our robot will play the game. The goal of this is just get their minds focused and get the gears running. While this can definitely be a bit more boring than coming up with a ton of designs, we had quite a few students praise it because it felt a lot more relaxed and was nicer to get a full handle on the game. This year, due to the added vocabulary and amount of seemingly ambiguous rules, this year was more time consuming than last year, but I think we still made great progress.

Field Build
On Sunday, we had a group of mentors come in and spend all day building the field so that we could use it on Monday. Due to the complexity of the Team Build design, we were not able to finish this Sunday, but have been actively working on it to hopefully finish what we need to adequately practice by the end of Week 1.

Human Robot Strategy Testing
Our first meeting after Kickoff was Monday. While our CAD subteam started working on architecture research and some members continued field building, our Strategy subteam ran our annual Human Game, where we have students act like robots and they play the game. This year’s human game was much more involved than last year as the individual tasks a robot can do are more plentiful.

We even had a few mini helpers to reset our field.

As you can see in the spreadsheet image below, we tried multiple combinations of robot types, and variations of their strategies during the match. Orange highlight means they played against a defensive robot.

Notes for the below analysis.

We assumed the combination of robots could always combine to have 1 park, 1 shallow cage, and 1 deep cage climb. The reasoning for this is that the points for these are very small, and likely will not take any more or less time than scoring the equivalent amount of coral/algae. This action is very Rank point heavy only.
These tasks were performed by various students throughout the night, so there exists some level of human error.
These run throughs were all done with the idea in mind that the Human player could let the processor fill. This has been reversed in Team Update 01 released Tuesday.
We also assumed all robots could LEAVE, as I assume many teams have plans to help teams without a LEAVE auto to achieve one.
This is nowhere near all the possible combination or robots and/or strategies possible.

Observations from this activity:

The first combination of having only 1 Coral scoring robot yielded the least scoring matches of all.
Also, losing a robot to go to the other side to play defense severely limited possible points scored.
In the first combination, playing under defense versus not was around a 60 point difference, which is something to ponder.
Having the defense robot do algae first in the second combination, and having 2 coral scoring robots yielded much higher scores as there are many locations to score coral. Again we see playing under defense versus not is 40-60 points different.
Having all 3 robots score coral and nothing else was way more points. However, at some point, all they are doing is scoring on L1, which is less points than even algae in the net.
So we moved on to the fourth combination where we made sure to score all algae in the net before continuing with L1 scoring. This proved to be the highest scoring match.
We think having all 3 robots able to score coral is key, but needing at least 1 or 2 being able to score algae in the net will yield the most points as coral build up in L1 is wasted opportunities if algae are left unscored.
We also think defense DOES matter, but not the whole match, as when we have all 3 robots scoring, even under defense, 1 robot can not sufficiently defend all 3 robots.
We also know we did not exhaust all possibilities, so other strategies may exist that are better.
Knowing the Barge rank point takes either 2 shallow cage climbs and a park or 1 deep cage and something else, we think having a deep cage climb on the alliance is important.

Our next step will be weighing needs and wants to our team goals to push which concepts we will need to pursue. More on that later.

Eric_Sells · January 11, 2025, 2:57pm

Needs/Wants/Perks

At our Thursday meeting, our CAD and Strategy subteams met to analyze our Needs versus Wants versus Perks. We wrote down tasks the robot could do as line items, then assigned each one as a Need, Want, Perk, or Absolutely Not/No Value. We decided these things based on our team goals for the season.

Our goals for season are the following, listed in order of priority:

Limit mechanical complexity to prioritize time for other subteams.
Be in captain position (top 8) at every competition we attend.
Win a competition.
Win an award at every competition we attend.

We then went through and determined what it means to achieve priority 2. Being in captain position at every competition we attend means prioritizing rank points. This year that means the following:

Winning matches rewards 3 rank points. Winning matches means scoring more points than the other alliance.
Auto RP is achieved by all 3 robots LEAVE-ing in auto, plus at least 1 coral being scored.
Coral RP is achieved by scoring 5 coral on each level, for a minimum of 20 coral (assuming no coop)
Barge RP is achieved by scoring at least 14 points from climbing and parking. This is achieved in a variety of ways, but comes down to 2 main ones. Either a Deep Cage climb plus any other, or 2 Shallow Cage climbs, plus any other.

Below is an image of our spreadsheet with our line items, our assignment of Need/Want/Perk, and our reasoning.

We then took our needs and ran a detailed match progression assuming we only could do our needs. We think during Qualification matches, our match will look similar to the following:

Auto Starts with the robot having a Coral preloaded.
We likely score it to the side on L4, then go to Coral Station.
Receive Coral from HP, score close L4, go back to Coral Station.
Repeat Step 3 as many times as we can in Auto. (We estimate at least 2-3, with the hope we get to 4 by State Championship.)
Once TeleOp starts, we continue scoring Coral from the Coral Station to the Reef, prioritizing 5 on each level.
To Score on L3, we would remove Algae while scoring.
Once 5 are on each level, we will then score from the top down.
At a given time (however long we know our climb takes), we will drive to the cage, and climb the deep cage.

In playoff matches, The main change to this is that instead of making sure there are 5 coral on each level, we would always place top down. If we end up being able to score Algae in the net, then we would intake Algae from the reef as we score on L3, and take turns scoring Algae and L3 Coral until the Reef was empty of Algae. Then continue to fill the Reef top down.

We think this strategy maximizes our potential for Rank points while also limiting our mechanical complexity.

Now our CAD subteam will research and mock up viable concepts for Strategy to analyze.

jhajel · January 11, 2025, 4:51pm

Have you received them and do they look promising?

Thank you!

Lexeo · January 11, 2025, 6:52pm

Just got them installed. I’m a fan.

The bumpers as pictured are CNC cut 18mm Baltic birch. The steel mounts make the corner super robust.

We didn’t make the outside steel corners for this set, but we will for our competition bumpers. That will end up extremely solid.

jhajel · January 12, 2025, 5:59pm

Looks great! Thank you.

Did you have to bend the brackets yourself or did can they be bent at SendCutSend?

Lexeo · January 13, 2025, 12:31am

We let SendCutSend do the bending and insert the 1/4-20 stud.

I did did talk or our assembly team, and they did decide to open up the 4 holes that interact with the studs a little for more clearance. We will probably adjust slightly for our next order.

Cost was a little higher than I’m used to for bumper mounts, but i think the increased strength makes it worth it - at least for us. Everyone can also get a voucher in the KOP to help reduce the cost a little.

Lexeo · January 13, 2025, 4:07pm

It’s Week 2!

With 1 week down we feel like we’ve made some good strides.

Robot Concept

We have settled on a robot concept to move forward with. We will have some kind of ‘active ramp’ to quickly acquire game pieces from the Coral Station and feed them into a holder capable of scoring the Coral in either direction using feed wheels. This will be mounted to a 2-stage cascade elevator with an arm pivoting at the top.

We also plan to be able to remove Algae with another manipulator on the ‘elevator/arm’ and score it in the Barge. We haven’t completely figured out how that claw will look, but it seems there are plenty of simple ways to accomplish this based on Ri3D and other OA teams

We also will do our deep climb iterating off of the RustHounds “bicep curl” climber.

At this time, we aren’t looking at doing ground pickup for Algae or Coral.

There are a lot of moving parts here, and with the deep climb, packaging this season will be a tough problem for many teams. Because of this, we think KrayonCAD is a valuable tool.

We put together a KrayonCAD showing the intended layout of our concept.

|283px;x287px;
Coral Station loading

|231px;x276px;
L1 Coral

L2 Coral

|191px;x287px;
L3 Coral

|185px;x297px;
L4 Coral

|149px;x379px;
Net Placement

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Deep Cage Climb

Kitbot

This season, we built a kitbot quickly. It was redesigned a bit to use pre-drilled 1x1 tubing, which made assembly very fast. We also adapted it to a chassis running MK4i swerve modules with all CTR hardware (Krakens, CANcoders, Pigeon 2.0) so we could use the CTR swerve library. We used this library in the preseason and were very happy with it. Here is our CAD, in case it helps anyone.

This robot is primarily a programming tool. Our strategy and robot concept revolve heavily around the Coral Station and scoring on the reef. As it happens, the kitbot also supports this. We believe we can use it to start programming auto paths early. We also want to work on auto-alignment and on-the-fly path planning. We had some success with this for the amp last preseason and believe this game is perfect for the tool. We will provide updates as we begin to work through some of this.

Climbing Alignment Tests

One of the potential weaknesses of the ‘bicep curl climb’ (or honestly, climbing in general) is the alignment time. We mocked up something similar to the RustHounds climber to test how hard it is to align. We placed the driver in the furthest driver station from the cage to simulate the worst-case scenario. We added a magnet to help hold the cage to the climber once it’s caught.

It’s definitely tricky to align right now. The magnet helps, but we think a stronger magnet would be even better. Next steps will include adding a second magnet and potentially some kind of ‘funnel’ system to make alignment faster.

Climbing alignment videos

Video 1

Video 2