The Plan

The team pouring over information just after kick-off.

At the start of a season, it's always good to have a plan. Not that it will get followed exactly, but, I think it's at least nice to have. So, what's our plan for week 1, and how are we doing?

Kick-Off Weekend

For anyone who may have missed it, Kick-Off happened! Just before Kick-Off, I wrote a blog post telling how CyberKnights have run this weekend in the past - the process, the deliverables, and the rough validation. In truth.... we actually followed the plan!

Drive practice on day 1? I'm good with that!

By the end of Saturday, we had a prioritized list that we felt described a robot that would meet our season goals - controlling our own destiny, qualifying for the World Championship, and be able to compete at a high level such as the Einstein Round Robin. Now we just need to build the thing...

Dusty! The team split into groups, one of them started cutting wood for field mock-ups!

Our un-validated, mostly ordered list was as follows:

• Gotta Go Fast! (This is technically about robot speed, but realistically applies to all aspects of the robot and schedule)
• Gotta Score High! (and Fast! and... I suppose Accurately)
• Gotta Collect from the Floor!
• Gotta Drive through the Trench!
• Gotta Spin the Wheel (of Fortune!) (Control Panel Disk)
• Gotta win Auto (Fast, and Accurately!)
• Gotta Hang!

On Sunday, we had our friends 2910 and 5803 join us, with some of their robots. Using 6 chassis from summer tests and previous years, we "played" Infinite Recharge. Now, while it was awesome to watch - having 3-4 extremely fast swerve bots may not have been the most representative (we didn't have the 1" bar on the rendezvous zone). But again, it was awesome to watch. Thanks for joining us friends!

Great to see 6 robots tearing it up on the carpet.

We did learn a number of valuable lessons over the course of the day however. We ran different match scenarios highlighting defense, traffic flow, game piece flow, and saw just how crowded the rendezvous zone will be with 6 robots clambering for a spot.

Fastest way to de-rail a 3-team discussion? Open the box of Falcons...

After Sunday, we ended up making a few changes to our priority list (and the requirements for each priority) following our data gathering.

Prototyping

Getting supplies and parts for early prototypes!

Monday, Tuesday and Thursday saw the shop filled with tiger teams building and testing proof of concept prototypes. Our overall plan for prototypes is to evolve them over time, increasing in fidelity and accuracy until each system almost matches the final, integrated form on the robot. Our V1 prototypes will be crude wood assemblies. V2 will start to use some CAD sketching and precision cuts on the router or mill. V3 is where each team will start building an assembly that fits together with other assemblies.

Once we get to the V2 prototypes, we will start to think about specific weight and power goals for each system - use of motors, pneumatics, and overall volumes for each component.

We have a team looking at the Control Panel. (Internally, by us and I'm sure a number of others, it's called the Wheel of Fortune. I'm OK with this.) This team is looking at wheels, contact points, and the force required to spin the wheel.

Preliminary testing of color recognition.

We have a team focused on shooter/launcher prototypes. They are looking at dealing with wheel options, compression options, and contact options to give us an optimal distance and height for scoring in both the outer and inner port.

Checking angles, distance and height. Record your test information! It's important!

Of course, we have testing for climbing. While it doesn't offer the same point availability as 2017, we still find that climbing every match will be important for winning matches and earning ranks points. We've also got a lot of friends, and if we can hang with them, you bet we will.

Give it the Clamps!

One of our pre-designated integrated systems is our intake and indexer. This team will be creating both systems in tandem, while communicating heavily with the shooter team. We're pretty sure that this is actually the hardest problem of the year. The energy cells are more squishy and grip-py than other game pieces we have seen in our history. We are looking to ensure we can't hold more than 5 game pieces at a time, but can quickly intake, index, and feed each ball to the shooter. It's okay though. We have top CyberKnights working on it now. Who? Top. CyberKnights.

Each of these systems present different challenges, and must meet their own requirements before going to the next phase of CAD and robot integration. (And... V3 prototypes...)

Cutting Metal

In previous years we saw the benefit of getting metal on the floor as soon as possible. It helped our software team ramp up on Auto path-ing and options. It helped our drive team start practicing early - getting the robot motion for repeat-able cycles. It helped us test stuff and break stuff as early as possible. (In 2018 it helped us learn that we couldn't drive over a platform corner, and we had time to make a change and cut another chassis!) Once again, we set a goal to start cutting our first chassis by working Day 5 (Thursday of week 1).

Not quite related to cutting metal - but buying metal!
Our students are hard at work budgeting, obtaining sponsors, and marketing!

One of those pesky summer projects we had was updating the software on our CNC router - which we did, and then never got around to testing and making <evil voice> fullyyy operational! </evil voice>. So, this week we got the control systems working, and got the router prepped to cut our chassis tubes, some field element parts, and start working on higher fidelity prototype pieces.

Keep the router running and the printers printing.

-B