Competition Week 5

Made some minor updates to the lab. Been waayy too long....

With our 2 district point-scoring events complete, and the 9 district events complete, we have now scraped up enough points to qualify for the PNW District Championships. (Ok, let's be real for a minute here. Last year we played in the Einstein finals, and this year we are scrambling for points to qualify for District Champs? Yeah, we had a long season with limited driving and tuning. It can happen. But for now, this is fine!) We made a few minor updates to the bot this weekend, and got it a lot more time driving under hard defense.

Preparation

This feels like its a common theme for the past few weeks (and will likely continue for yet another week! ... I should really clean my house at some point... Perhaps that's what May is for...) Another district event, another 6 hour access window, handled during finals week of classes. What could possibly go wrong?

Lunch in important preparation. Silliness ensued...

Once more, we practiced driving. The more time we get to drive, the better our performance will be. Spare moment? Drive the bot. Last time, we spent time working on our software autonomous. With drive practice, we were fast enough to consistently place a starting hatch and collect a second hatch, getting ever closer to scoring 2 hatches on camera driving. In the end, the benefit and gain of more driving that helps sandstorm, also helps driving in tele-op. One of our biggest items to constantly constantly practice is driving under defense. This game, and the PNW district, rewards good, solid, hard defense. Our job is to outplay the defense, and make the juke moves, spins, and pushes faster and smoother.

Updates

After ... eh... incidents... in Glacier Peak, we recognized two things: We need to climb, somehow. (If you have an idea for a 5-pound climber that fits our bot, please write-in!) And our protective shields were not sufficient. During our robot access periods, we ended up fabricating new rear-corner protective plates, and plastic to cover our sides and air tanks. To help with climbing, we started manufacturing some delrin to be added during load-in at the Auburn Event. These slides mounted to the base of the robot, and coupled with some support pistons, we could make better efforts to climb onto HAB level 2 at the end of a match. We actually managed this feat several times. We also... didn't manage it several times. Loud thumps happened.

Auburn

Watching the finals

We finished second! Finally took home some hardware for 2019. Over the past three weeks, I have been excited to see, hear, and watch the energy and excitement of the team ramp up. We always attempt to be gracious and helpful to teams in all scenarios, and Auburn was no different. I love watching CyberKnights interacting with other teams, spreading this shared excitement for Science and Technology in a fun way.

During qualification matches... we did pretty much the same thing. Try to score more points than the other team. Try to earn 15 HAB points for an extra RP. If the match plays out, try and fill up a rocket. We won a few matches. We score a number of HAB RP, and, we, the 4911 CyberKnights, solo, filled, comma, a rocket. That was a lovely sight to see. Practice after practice in the lab, and finally in a real match, we did it. We built us a good bot. There's a broken record playing somewhere about drive practice... OPR again showed that we were a top scoring robot.

Once again, we played every second of every match. Our pit crew constantly keeping things torqued and together, though this week we ended up swapping out a number of high-use/high-wear hardware. During one of our HAB 2 jump attempts, we struck at an angle, and bent one of our frame flanges into an omni wheel. Not to worry, takes less than 120 seconds to swap a wheel, a few bends and cuts to remove a bent flange, and then back out for the next match. One other re-appearing maintenance item is sheering rivets on our cargo ground intake. During elimination match downtime, we swapped out a few 1/8" aluminum rivets with 10-32 bolts. The standard load path we looked at when installing this mechanism showed that rivets should work, but hard defense and side hits are changing the loads, therefore, we changed the mount. Learn, update, improve.

Trying to score under some hard PNW defense

It's usually pretty easy to find our pit in among-st the crowd. We use a 10'x10'x10' aluminum rail cube that hangs our banners, showing a number of our team programs, outreach, and accomplishments. Our pit also evolves every year, for usefulness, safety and setup. Here's a few things I in particular love about our home away from home.... away from... actual home...

• Foam Mats: If you are going to be standing in the pit for a while, crawling on your knees, dropping tools/etc, having foam is an absolute must. It helps keep the gym/event floor cleaner, and (hopefully) helps prevent losing parts, providing you clean the floor after each block of work.
• RO-RO: Roll-on, roll-off. We have 4 main items that hold 90% of our pit kit, and all 4 of them are wheeled. We have one large tool chest for all mechanical, electrical, pneumatic and etc requirements. We have a smaller tool chest that holds safety and business equipment. Our battery cart is on wheels, and then we have our metal rack which carries some of the larger tools, game pieces, spare parts and spare metal/plastic. We arrange these 4 items in a giant 'L' within the pit, and can generally set up in a matter of minutes.
• New for 2019! Static robot stand: We accidentally built our chassis to sit perfectly on top of a craftsman mini-work stand. It has been amazing to have this solid base on which to sit our robot when running post-match checks, upgrades, inspection, etc. We have access to all corners of the robot, and the height makes it easier on all of us.
• Open Floor Plan: As stated above, we have our main pit items in a big 'L' within our pit box. This gives us a nice big area in which to work on the robot, and space to access and use all the tools we may need. This is helpful not only for safety and access, but also organization and efficiency. We spend less time tripping over each other and more time working on tasks! Part of this also involves keeping backpacks, sweatshirts and other personal items out of the pits. (And out of the stands. Seriously, just put it / leave it in the car.)

Coming Up Next

So, we are now heading to PNW District Championships, our 4th straight week of competition. Congratulations to all teams who qualified and we will see you there. Thanks for the matches and the fun for the teams who we'll see again next year!

Quote of the Week

"I didn't use a single electrical tool this meet!" - Student Electrical Lead