Competition 4: World Championship!

After two years away, teams from across the globe would once again converge at the largest FRC event of the year- the World Championship. Prior to the pandemic, there were actually 2 World Championships, with over 400 teams competing at each, allowing over 800 teams access to this experience. For 2022, only 1 Championship event was able to be hosted, and the best of the best would all compete for ultimate glory!

Competition 3: District Championship

 We may have arrived back at the lab fresh off a win at the Sammamish District Event, but we had a lot of work to accomplish if we wanted to be successful at District Championships. 

And spoiler:

We were a little successful at District Championships.

Competition 2: Sammamish

 A picture says a thousand words...

Week 9: Competition Break

We had two weeks between competitions to debrief, enact fixes, and try to improve our competitiveness. Our main hurdle was the issue with our climbing mechanism. We had some thoughts and plans for how we might fix it and make it more stable and reliable. Or - we could take a Dremel to the top half of the robot, design a brand new system, and walk into our second competition with a pretty different looking robot. 

Competition 1: Glacier Peak

So, how did it go?

We had some great matches, and some... lessons learned.

Week 7: SlapShot

Ah man, I didn't even do an update here. Lots of drive practice and software tuning happened. With our first event coming up soon, there were also a number of logistic items in terms of packing tools, preparing spare parts, and final touches to make the robot look good.

Week 6: Coalescence

One nicety about how the robotics system generally works, is that when some things take a while to really nail down and get right - that extra time in the beginning can save a lot of time at the end. In week 6, we started reaping a few rewards, and watched as a pile of parts transformed, very quickly.

Week 5: Loop-de-loop

Week 5 was all about crossing over from design details into manufacturing. The robot design (at the end of week 5) was over 95% complete, with only the intake subsystem need final details for its v1 iteration. This was chosen intentionally as the last piece, as it had the least required integration among the other components.

Week 4: Angular Momentum

Time passes so quickly...

We officially approved 90% of the robot CAD, and can start manufacturing parts! Wahoo!

Week 3: Tempo

 At the start of build season, we set an aggressive schedule, on purpose. Push ourselves to achieve it, but know that we'll find things, and some targets may slide.

Week 2: Adaptation, Improvisation

Week 2 is all about refinement - taking our prototypes, making sure we get specific data from them. (Making sure we write down the specific data... oops.)

Week 1: The New Shiny

 

On Jan 8th, the FIRST Robotics Competition game for the 2022 season was unveiled to the 3000+ teams across the globe.