Post/Pre-Match Robot Repair Strategies

Competition Team Organization
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Hey,

I was wondering what strategies y’all have employed in your pits during a comp to make sure your robot is ready in a timely manner before a match(avoiding careless mistakes) and uses.

The teams I’ve been a part of few methods that have had success (on/off checks, generally clean/organized pits, etc) but I would be interested to hear and learn more about what has been successful for you all in terms of keeping what’s going on in the pit efficient.

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After every match, and after changing anything, run through all robot functions to make sure they still work.

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I have always liked checklists, something written down physically that the pit crew goes through and checks. It should also be considered a living document, if it’s determined later that a subsystem or part needs more attention, add it to the list. Also, check your bolts more often then you think you should, it’s saved us a few times.

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LRUS. (Line replaceable units). Basically a fully assembled duplicate of subsystems. They are especially useful for anything that extends outside frame perimeter ie intake this year. We could take six bolts off and fully repair the intake in 30 seconds. One the broken part is off the robot you can repair it on the side.

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Health checks are magical to find motors/gearboxes that may be having issues through current draw anomolies.

As well as visual inspiration, organized clean wiring on the bot to see problems (see my opinions on swerve covers that may hide issues… ).

Finally, preferably at the shop, try to get errors to surface ahead of time (lose wires, bearings retained incorrectly, missing loctite, etc. These are avoidable, why put yourself in that situation?

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We have a procedure we’ve worked out over several seasons. It runs like this:

  • First, we repair any obvious damage or problems from the previous match. However, while this is ongoing (unless it’s impractical due to the damage or repair) we keep going with the rest of the procedure.
  • Second, mechanical team members on the pit crew examine the robot closely, looking for minor or hidden damage, loose fasteners, etc. A good once-over to make sure everything is mechanically sound.
  • Third, electrical team does the same thing, looking for damaged wires, checking connections, etc. to ensure it’s also sound.
  • Fourth, the programming team runs through their diagnostics from the match.
  • Fifth, the programmers run the robot through it’s basic functions and movements. They make all mechanisms operate as they need to, check the drive system (always swerve modules for us these days), and check the cameras and sensors.
  • Finally, we reset the robot for the new match. This has it’s own sub-procedure that depends on the season, of course. It’s at this point we do things like change batteries (because why use a fresh battery for testing), set mechanisms to their starting configuration, etc.

The key to this whole procedure is that every pit crew member has their assigned role in it, so there’s no doing the same check three time but missing another check. We work out the details of the procedure and assignments ahead of the event, so we have a smooth-running pit and the robot stays in competition shape.

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adding onto this , the only thing that needed to be done with connecting LRUS is connecting any wiring. all our LRUs are tested ahead of time, checked for wear, and have motors. we bring spare parts (ie intake plates) on top of this to repair our subsystems. this allows us to make most swaps within <5 minutes and has saved us during comp (spilling loctite all over our climber, back to back matches, etc)

at comp, i know we try to prioritze drivetrain above all else if we’re short on time + we run a prematch checklist. if something is obviously broken, we’ll look at that first and then our controls people run through robot functions.

while this doesn’t necessarily relate to at competition, our mentor/coaches will purposefully try to break the robot and simulate a competition enviroment to ensure that our team knows where things are located in our superpit and what to do to fix it which saves time on the little things and helps us find new things to add to our prematch checklist

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I’ve watched 2910’s " Between-Match Stuff: AKA Systems Check Yourself Before You Wreck Your Match" a few times. They have great actionable advice with specifics things to do to make your bot more reliable.

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