Kickoff Weekend!
It’s been a few hours since our last post! 572 hours, to be exact! And REEFSCAPE has finally started!
Skyview Kickoff
Last Saturday, we visited a local kickoff at Skyview High School hosted by 2811 (StormBots) and 9567 (StormBreakers) to watch the game reveal! It was incredible, and we’re very grateful that they host this local kickoff for teams all over the Portland metropolitan area every year!
Alumni Asher Anderson and Wyatt Ballweber with design director Colin Hutton at kickoff.
After returning to our shop, we made a list of every action and sub-action that we would have to take in order to accomplish different tasks, and considered the best way to earn ranking points.
Game Strategy
On Monday, we continued to work, finalizing our game strategy and making a priority list. We also started to sketch mechanism ideas.
To decide what strategies to prioritize, we split into groups of 6-7 people and each brainstormed how we thought a match would go, assuming how many game pieces a low-tier, mid-tier, and high-tier robot would score. We concluded that as prioritizing coral would maximize points, and allow us to get both the AUTO RP and CORAL RP, this would be the best choice.
We also wanted to try the deep climb, as it almost guarantees the BARGE RP. However, we recognized that in planning for a deep climb, the rest of our robot would have to be built around that mechanism. We decided that we would take a week to design a mechanism for the deep climb, and if we didn’t have one by the end of Saturday, we would pivot to going for a shallow climb mechanism.
We recognized the importance of vision in much of the game as well, whether it be for pose estimation, or providing visibility to drivers. We will be pursuing more advanced vision programming in the weeks to come to simplify driver tasks and ensure we can see on the field.
Throughout the build season, members of each subteam have also been collaborating on our Impact Award presentation and video. This is the first year we’ve gone for the Impact Award, so it’s a very novel undertaking for us.
Task Forces
To achieve the tasks we set Monday, we split into groups that will focus on each endeavor: a scoring mechanism for the L4 branch, a climbing mechanism for the deep cage, vision code which will move to a position on the field, and an Impact Award presentation and video. Each task force has members from different subteams, with the exception of the vision task force which is solely programmers.
L4 Mechanism Task Force
Over the week, the L4 task force researched ideas to score on the reef, and eventually began sketching a design loosely based on Ninjineer's and Unqualified Quokka's Ri3D intake and pivot respectively. One of our main priorities for both our L4 mechanism and deep climb mechanism were simplicity, so on the L4 mechanism, we decided to go for an elevator connected to a single pivot arm with a static, angled intake.
The L4 task force meets in a conference room.
Deep Climb Mechanism Task Force
The deep climb task force looked at designs from Ri3D robots, eventually deciding to start prototyping with the RustHOUNDS' deep climb mechanism. Some pros of the mechanism noticed were simplicity and distance off the ground. However, the cage moves a lot, which is a downside of the mechanism. Since Thursday, the task force has been CADding a design for the mechanism, and basic code for moving the climber subsystem has been made.
Lauren, the leader of the task force, shows off the design for the cage manipulator.
Vision Task Force
The vision task force initially planned to directly use data read from the AprilTag to drive the robot's location and orientation towards the tag, but later decided to use PathPlanner's AutoBuilder to automatically create an auto leading to a pre-built path that drives the robot towards our goal. This was used in conjunction with WPILib's odometry and Limelight's MegaTag2 localizer.
The vision task force brainstorming solutions to moving to the reef autonomously.
Impact Award Task Force
Over the past week our Impact Award team has been researching videos and presentations made by past Impact Award winners to get inspiration for our video and slideshow. They have also been collecting photos and videos from past years.
Conclusion
That’s all for this week! If something horrible or awesome happens, we’ll update you on it sooner than usual!
