GalacTech is ready to open our build season again for the 2025 competition! We have shared and learned so much from each of our 3 years in the Open Alliance. Now on to Year #4! We’ll keep all of these links updated throughout the year, so you can always find our “main/latest” CAD and code along with the Video and Picture repositories.
Here’ s what you can expect to see here:
Game Analysis - Statistical Analysis via Monte Carlo simulation
Prototyping successes and failures - Failures are our specialty
Engineering analysis
Dad Jokes - ok these are mostly mine
Live CAD Link - [ Fusion Link bad link updated 1/15/2025 ]
Kickoff is only a couple hours away! Before we get started, we would like to provide a brief summary of our offseason.
We competed in 3 offseason events: RiverBOaT Rumble in Kentucky, Rainbow Rumble in Michigan, and Boiler Bot Battle in Indiana. In RiverBOaT Rumble and Rainbow Rumble, we used the robot from our 2024 competition season.
For Boiler Bot Battle, we built an offseason robot that used MK4i swerve modules, unlike our competition robot that used tank drive. We built the offseason robot as a way to gain experience with swerve, which we plan to make the jump to in the 2025 season. We finished B3 as the second pick of the winning alliance.
After the kickoff video, we marked off half the field on our available build space, inflated our Algae and measured their circumference to check inflation, and built a prototype “Coral Mover.” We built the coral mover just to experiment with how the PVC moves through ‘a system’ not as a real robot part. We like to get a feel for how game pieces act.
Inflating and Measuring Algae
We’ll make a gauge to make quick checks, but for now measuring circumference!
Coral is a hard cylinder and therefore fairly predictable in how it handles. We built a simple collector based on available 3D printed connectors for rapid prototype builds
Next step is reading the game manual and planning robot technical requirements. In 8-10 days we must have a complete technical requirements list (robot must to X but won’t do Y). REEFSCAPE looks fun! Good Luck everyone!
We used the first week of the build season to get a better understanding of Reefscape’s rules and strategies. Our post kickoff homework was to read the grade manual. There has been a lot of snowfall in Indiana during the last few days so, on Monday, we had an online meeting to discuss possible strategies for the game, since the weather simply couldn’t let us meet at our shop. On Tuesday, the students took a rules quiz to test their knowledge of the game. On Wednesday and Thursday, we continued to make more prototypes to see how to manipulate the game pieces.
Here is a couple of them!
Funnel Intake
We designed a funnel prototype to see how using one can make intaking coral from the station easier and more efficient. We learned that if the walls of the funnel were built to have a little bit of flexibly, the coral can correctly adjust to the vertical orientation, even if the human player were to roll it horizontally. IMG_3435.MOV - Google Drive
Deep Cage Climb
The team has a lot of interest in doing a deep cage climb. We made a prototype of a possible design that can be used to successfully perform one. In the middle of the test, the prototype broke but the design showed signs of potential success. IMG_0699.MOV - Google Drive
Note: I accidentally made a typo in the offseason summary post.
We used Mk4 swerve modules on our offseason robot, not Mk4i. We plan to use Mk4 modules this season.
We have decided what we want to prioritize this season. We ran a Monto Carlo simulation which ran 10,000 matches with 3,200 robots to capture a broad range of expected alliances and matches. We used the results to help us identify the capabilities we expect to differentiate higher scoring alliances.
After running the simulation, we have decided to prioritize the following:
Scoring in L4, L3, and L2
Performing a Deep Cage Climb
The simulation informed us that scoring algae into the processor or net does not play as much of a significant role as scoring coral. In the early stages of competition, it would mainly be beneficial for the coopertition ranking point. If we do plan to score algae sometime this season, it will be after we mastered the tasks above. We want to focus on fast coral cycles so we can fill up the reef and, ultimately, get the coral ranking point.
Meanwhile, we are still trying to make some decisions on specific design choices such as:
What should the dimensions of the swerve chassis be? (27” X 27”) or (24” X 24”)? Perhaps even something else?
Where do we intake and outtake? Do we want to intake from one side of the robot and outtake from the opposite or intake and outtake from the same side?
How to perform a deep climb? Do we go with a “bicep curl” climber like the Rusthounds RI3D? Or how about the Pantherbots RAGE Climber? Or maybe even our own thing?
We spent most of the second week confirming what we want to have in our competition robot. As stated in the last post, we want to make a robot that prioritizes quickly scoring coral into the upper levels of the reef. We decided to use a 3-stage Thrifty Elevator to lift coral to the desired height for scoring. Coral will be acquired from the station and scored from the same side of the robot.
This is a simple 2D sketch of how we plan to intake and score.
We also confirmed that the dimensions of the Mk4 Swerve chassis will be 27” X 27.” Unlike our offseason robot, which used NEOs to drive and steer, our 2025 drivetrain will be using Kraken X60s
We are still trying to decide how we should perform a deep climb as well as our final design for our coral intake/outtake. Hopefully, we can get answers sometime in Week 3.
