Day 30, 31, 32

This would have been a nothing storm for New Hampshire...

As I write this tonight, we are now under the 2 week mark. 14 calendar days until we put a competition robot (competition piece of sheetmetal?) into a giant bag. We have starting manufacturing our second chassis, and are still finding little details we want/need to address before some mechanism parts hit the the cutting edge of a flute or endmill.

Snow? Snow Problem!

No, I'm not referencing that Robot-In-3-Days team, sadly. The greater Seattle area got a pile of snow dumped on us, and the weather for next week is reminding me of my New Hampshire high school years. We have only a core of students working at the lab these past two days, and with the snow freezing to ice overnight, we are all making plans one day at a time. Our manufacturing will take a hit, but we will have backup plans if the weather gets more severe. Most of the students are able to work on CAD at home. Mentors and students can video call using Skype or Google Hangouts and review assemblies. CAM files can get created and reviewed. Software can continue coding up framework for the robot given knowledge of the mechanisms and sensors. Our business and marketing team is able to update the website and more from the comfort of home. We can manage most tasks aside from cutting metal, assembling metal, and driving metal. In 2015 we printed a large banner - "Snow Day = Robots Day".

Agile Iteration

The truth is, I'm actually not freaking out. I'm coming to grips with some mistakes and assumptions I personally have made this season. Yes, I feel we can be further along, (much further along) but I don't think we are so doomed as to scrap this whole season and just hit the 'NOPE' button. (Off-season project, make a giant NOPE button.) Our first event this year will be week 3. We will have most (if not all) ((hopefully)) of a practice robot manufactured and assembled, and we will have 2 weeks before our first event to find flaws, made updates, and generally improve the team and robot before facing the heat of competition ourselves. We will have one complete robot with all our current systems. We will watch a LOT of matches, we will see a LOT of robots, and we will have literally SOME students available to crank out brand new ideas. A feature that we are attempting to build into many of our mechanisms is modularity. A few spins of a wrench to replace a damaged part, swap out wear items, or remove an entire assembly. If a new design is able to mount in the same manner and remain clear of interference, we can bring new iterations, or brand new mechanisms to each competition and make changes fast. Right now (well, we don't even have all of the CAD finished...) we don't have the best robot we can. By the end of the season, we will have a better robot than with which we started.

Dean's List

When its all listed out, it looks organized!

Saturday at our all team meeting we announced our 2019 Deans List candidates! (And there was much rejoicing). But really, there was a lot to celebrate, because Dean's List is a super important award. We have the Chairman's Award to recognize amazing teams and the impacts they can achieve in their communities. We also have the Woodie Flowers Award to recognize incredible mentors and the efforts they put upon themselves to teach and inspire students and other mentors around them. Our team has 13 students meeting the criteria for Dean's List. Several are team rookies but great students. Several have had amazing impact on the team and our outreach programs already. Two really stood out for the mentors. Dean's List is written by mentors to honor and recognize students who best demonstrate strong values in FIRST, in science and technology, and spreading awareness in their community. They are the individual Chairman's students within a single FRC team. (Or are Chairman's winners the Dean's list candidates of their region/district..?) Recognizing contributions of teams and their members is something that every team should do on their own. We hold a small ceremony after the robot is bagged and recognize our team leads and team achievements (Or team learnings. Which really means failures that didn't completely derail us). We celebrate our seniors with our annual end-of-year banquet. Our mentors take a night off and celebrate each other at our mentor night of relaxation.... gathering? In any case, these awards are one of the prime methods for inspiration. Students who are selected as candidates know that they are steering their team the right way. Teammates look to these students as leaders and follow in their examples. Dean's List semi-finalists and finalists are recognized as leaders in their communities, exemplar students in their districts and regions. Finalists are held in the highest regard, sure you hear about college submissions and scholarships, but these students are also juniors and sophomores. Their next biggest contributions will be viewable and measurable immediately following their recognition. I personally wish there was more information provided about Dean's List winners, ways to follow them and see the incredible things they do next. I have also seen how every contribution by any team member should be valued and recognized. This is not about gifting a participation trophy. It's simply about inspiration.

"How Did We Get Here?" Moment

"So... We just measured the center of the cargo in the collect position. Slid the carriage to the highest point, and the center of the cargo is 1" below our expected height? With field dimensions and software stops, we are 2" short?" - Me, day 30

All the planning in the world....

Packaging and integrating can be the most painful parts of build. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the small picture, that when it comes together, we've forgotten about the macro goals. A student working on a lift worked to find a lift height in week 1. A student working on a cargo mechanism knew he had to collect the cargo, and the two students shared a common plane - the carriage plate. When the two systems came together, we found our issue hiding in the detail that the center of the cargo was below the midpoint of the carriage. Our stellar design lead was able to re-capture 2 inches of travel without increasing our starting configuration height. (And only a sophomore! He's going to be good when he's a senior!) For our team, part of this issue occurring week 4 is a mentor issue, learning how each student performs best, and how best to interact with each student. For some items, I take a pretty hands off approach. "Hey Cormac, have you and Caleb talked about the carriage plate yet? Do you know how you're mounting?" And then I'll walk away and leave it to them. (Usually to go write blog post stuff.) This works for some students, and doesn't work for others. Students learn differently and mentors have to adjust their approach where necessary. The second part of this comes from designing in a vacuum. This is not the first time we've have issues like these, and it won't be the last. Students fire up their own computers, each takes their own system, and two weeks later may be the first time all the assemblies are actually merged into a single master file. We make efforts to alleviate merge pains by defining bounding volumes and common mounting planes, but this doesn't resolve all issues when attempting to packing so much robot into such a small space. Students learn these lessons every year, and that's okay, because every year its new students learning these lessons. (As a mentor, its frustrating as heck going through the same learning exercises 6 years running. Fortunately as we get new kids, it gives me an opportunity to keep telling my terrible dad jokes :-D) Every year we get to points like these, making slow progress, but progress. Most years I sit and think to myself "How did we design ourselves into this corner again?". Then I see another students eyes expand, because they have now experienced this lesson.

Quote of the Day:

"Sometimes the mentors get to play!" - mechanical mentor, running a mill all by himself with no students around.