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.

Pre-Event:

2022-04-02

While a District event is anywhere from 20-35 teams, and every registered team is guaranteed 2 District events - the District Championship hosted at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, WA would be 50 teams, all of whom qualified by performing well at their respective District Events.

Our robot, with a new name: QuickDrop, had lived up to its name in the final rounds of Sammamish - a redesign of our climber mechanism gearboxes was in order to prevent a repeat fall. We still had too much, and not rigid enough superstructure remaining from our first climber implementation - we wanted to remove any unnecessary weight and create a stiff box structure with weight as low as possible. Our intake needed a number of parts replaced due to wear that we saw in this competition.

On the software side of things, our robot had a dialed in shot from right next to the Cargo Hub, but we built a fully adjustable hood and targeting camera mount for a reason. It was time to start shooting from a distance, saving cycle time and allowing us to score more points during each match.

A lot of work to do, and realistically, not much time to do it. We came up with an initial plan and schedule, and got to work. Because we needed time to design some updates, and time to then order parts, we heavily front-loaded our time for software to make changes. The first 5 days were all given to the software team to get automated shooting working - the robot would identify a target via image processing, use a delta X from the image to automatically rotate so that we were facing the Cargo Hub, and use a delta Y to determine the position of the adjustable hood.

After a week, the upgraded designs were complete, parts were getting manufactured, and parts orders were starting to arrive. In just one day, we completed all our mechanical upgrades to the robot, and had it buttoned-up and back together for software to re-check and tune.

In previous years, robot access was significantly more limited. Once the robot was "finished", teams had to (literally) put the robot in a giant bag, sealed from use or modification until competition. Each competition, teams had a 6-hour access window to do any modifications or software testing, then compete. This year, all of that is gone, and we have unrestricted access to the robot - allowing us to constantly iterate on our mechanisms and reliability through the season. Three days before we shipped out to Eastern WA, the mechanical team again took the robot, and essentially stripped it bare. We were able to check wear on every belt and bearing, replacing bad ones, making note of how our designs held up on the real robot. I really like this new aspect - a lot more learning can happen over the course of a single season.

Competition Weekend:

2022-04-09

At competition, all students have jobs to perform - some are scouts, watching matches and recording data for how other teams perform. Our drive team, well, drives the robot in our matches. Our pit crew maintains the robot and prepares it for upcoming matches. We constantly repeat the same thing to the students: do your task. The schedule is entirely random, we can't control it. Do your task. Our drive team's job is not to win matches, their job is to complete the tasks discussed in the pre-match discussion. Score some number of Cargo, and climb. Do your task.

Thursday was load-in, inspection, some practice matches, and finally our first few qualification matches. Thursday, we had some problems.

When we load into an event, the team generally agrees that the robot is in 'parc ferme' - mechanical and software lock. No changes unless absolutely necessary, and discussed as a group before being changed.

During our pre-event testing in the lab, we installed an electrical component (a network switch) that was supposed to prevent an issue with how the robot and operating laptop receive data from the camera. (It uses ethernet.) We had issues with that setup, so we removed the switch and reverted to a state that worked for us, however had seen failures from other teams.

Thursday morning the team got a special gift - a new network switch that used a different power connector that would remedy the issues we experienced back in our shop. The robot was in 'competition lock' status though, so we didn't install it.

Our first practice match we encountered an issue and could not use our camera for automated targeting. Fearing this was the glitch, we installed the new network switch. Our second practice match went smoothly, showing our distance shooting abilities, and 3-second climb.

Thursday evening we had 3 matches - lost 2 and won 1. In Match 1, the robot disconnected. Match 2 everything ran fine (just a tough match!) And Match 3 we again experienced a 20-second disconnect. Volunteers came to help out, checking logs, and identified an issue with the main computer rebooting due to a power loss.

We ended the day rank 43 out of 50.

Friday morning, we inspected all our electrical connections again, and replaced the robot main computer. After much conversation, and one more match Friday morning where we again encountered a 20 second disconnect, we decided to basically rip out the electrical change and revert back to our 'parce ferme' robot spec. We had successfully used this setup in the lab, and added a new pre-match procedure to verify the camera was working. We had 6 more matches to play Friday afternoon.

We won all 6 matches.

We ended Friday ranked 8 of 50.

We didn't even know that type of progress was possible!

Saturday morning we again won our last 2 qualifying matches, ending in rank 6. We did not encounter the camera glitch. As we had finally shown what our robot was capable of, for the elimination rounds, the rank 1 team asked us to join their alliance to try and win the event. After a brace on wins across 3 matches in quarterfinals, and 2 matches in semi-finals, we were preparing the robot for the final matches. One final hiccup to overcome - one of the plates that holds our intake together had developed a crack, and that crack was growing. Some quick thinking and re-use of some spares allowed us to rivet a splint across the crack, and we were out to play once again.

Finals matches were fun, nerve-wracking, but in the end our alliance overcame the odds and won the event! This team's first District Championship win in our 9 years of competing!

Across the District as a whole, we earned the 3rd most points - granting us one of the 18 PNW slots to attend the World Championship in Houston, TX.

The Weekend in Pictures:

Always fun taking the robot apart in the middle of competition... Fortunately, we did have easy access to all our electrical systems to attempt diagnosing our issues.

Can confirm, robot is held together by zip-ties. So many zip-ties.

3rd event, longest event yet - many tired faces. We bring foam mats for the pit folks to stay comfortable.

Picture taken after the fact - this is the plate on our intake - you can see the crack, and we riveted some spare metal pieces to create a splint and hold the crack together.

After so many years, and a number of second place awards, we finally won a District Championship! Thanks to our partners from Henry Jackson High School and Bonney Lake High School!

-B