A couple weeks before Christmas, we participated in the Cary Christmas Parade for the second time, allowing us to introduce our team and display our robots to our community. We lined up in the queue and prepared our float and robots for the route. As we were testing the robots minutes before the parade started, Trillian’s back wheel snapped, disabling her ability to drive the course. But don’t panic! We quickly adjusted and stationed Trillian at the back of the float alongside Benjy.
During the parade, students participated in every area; some stayed on the float controlling the robots and feed Trillian and Benjy frisbees and basketballs. Others walked the course, catching the flying objects from the robots and handing out candy. Having Trillian shoot frisbees and Benjy launch basketballs continuously through the parade route never ceased to amaze the thousands of kids and parents. One person even asked if they could get a robot instead of a handful of candy!
The Cary Christmas Parade this year was another enjoyable experience for our team and we had a lot of fun supporting and spreading FIRST and sharing our enthusiasm for STEM!
After ranking third alliance overall at off-season competition, THOR III, we knew we needed to make some critical improvements to our new robot, Arthur, in order to perform to the best of our ability at SCRIW V. With a mere two weeks between THOR and SCRIW, our main priority for this off-season competition was to be able to lift a recycling container successfully each time we attempted it and place it atop a stack of six totes. We made the necessary decision of meeting five days a week for the two weeks we had to work on our robot. After several design ideas and building efforts, we were able to create a highly efficient, reliable lifting mechanism that met our needs. We managed to finish with a few days left to spare which we used to get some practice before the competition. Despite only having enough space to practice making stacks of five totes with a recycling container, we were confident in our robot’s ability to achieve our goal of making a stack of six totes topped with a recycling container.
At SCRIW, we started out with a rough match, but managed to consistently make two stacks of six totes topped with a recycling container and litter every match that followed. Sometimes we even had extra time to make a third stack of a couple totes with a recycling container. The performance of our robot made us alliance carriers in every single one of our qualification matches. As a result, our ranking, though fluctuating, remained within the top three throughout the majority of the qualification matches.
By the end of the qualification matches, we were ranked number one, thus being the first team to pick in alliance selections. Our alliance consisted of four teams: Team 4451, Robotz Garage; Team 1226, The Gorilla’s (1225) B Team; Team 3976, Electric Hornets; and ourselves, Team 2059, The Hitchhikers. Although Team 4451 was also capable of making two stacks of six totes with a recycling container, we knew we needed our other alliance members to be able to work the landfill and possibly get a fourth container from the center step on the playing field. Our strategy worked to our advantage and at the end of it all, we were named SCRIW V Champions!
A few weeks before THOR, North Carolina’s FRC off season competition, we had the idea to rebuild our robot, Dent. We knew it would not be easy because it required us to build another one in a little over three weeks that was better than our old one. Wanting to challenge ourselves, though, we decided to take the risk and start rebuilding. The project of creating another robot also provided the opportunity to train our new students.
By the time we finished building our new robot, Arthur, we only had a couple of days to practice driving and making stacks. Once we arrived at THOR, we found out that practice matches were not being run, which meant that our drive team was unable to get practice on a full field. As a result, our first few matches were a little rough because our drive team was still trying to get familiar with Arthur. As the morning progressed, our drive team got better and better. We ended up being able to stack four totes with a container and noodle on top, and get one to two stacks of three totes.
After the qualification matches, we ended up being ranked twenty-fourth, a result of being unable to catch up after our first few matches. During alliance selections, the third highest-ranking team chose us as their first pick. Our alliance ended up consisting of four teams: Team 5160, The Chargers; Team 2640, The Hotbotz; Team 2655, The Flying Platypi; and Team 2059, The Hitchhikers. The elimination rounds followed in quick succession, and our alliance ranked third overall. THOR was a great learning experience and will help us improve our performance in the offseason event, SCRIW, next week in South Carolina!
Having participated in the Palmetto Regional a few weeks before, our team came into this regional with a good idea of what we needed to do to perform well. Thursday went well and we were able to get autonomous working. We were also able to get in a lot of practice with the improved mechanisms that we had been working on during the weeks in between the competitions.
On Friday, we started off well and created multiple stacks, but did not have many of them capped with recycling containers, which caused our ranking to be low. As the morning progressed, our average score increased and we were slowly climbing up in the rankings. In our sixth match, we got the highest score of the regional, moving us from 39th place to 8th. After seven matches, we ended the day in 8th place.
The following day, we had another high scoring match and finished up qualifications in 8th place. We were the first pick for the first ranked team, Team 1225, The Gorillas. By the end of alliance selections, we had an all North Carolina alliance, with Team 900, The Zebracorns, as the third robot on our alliance.
We soared through qualifications as we scored over 100 points in both of our matches and advanced to the semi finals in first place. During the semi finals, one of our alliance partners’ robot was not working properly and we were close to getting knocked out. However, we took our one time out to get their robot fixed, and in the third match, we scored the highest score of the elimination rounds, which advanced us to the finals. In the first finals match, we outscored the other by three points, giving us a 1-0 lead for the win. In the second finals match, we had a rough start having the first couple of stacks getting knocked over and the other stacking robot having pneumatic issues. At the end of the match, we came out as the winners with a score of 72-65.
After the final matches, we were awarded with not only the win, but also the Industrial Safety Award and the Engineering Inspiration Award. We are having a great season and are looking forward to competing at the FRC World Championships in St. Louis!
Thank you to all of our sponsors, volunteers, and fellow teams who have all made this possible!
This week, the team accomplished a lot in the building and design of our robot. One of the big focuses of the week was getting the robot to actually drive. After 3 weeks of designing and prototyping, our robot finally came to life. Getting to this point, though, required us to overcome a variety of issues.
One issue that we discovered early on was that the gusset plates of the underside of the chassis were interfering with the wheels of the robot. We also had to modify the bolts that attached the gearboxes to the chassis. Doing this meant sanding down every bolt, which was a time consuming effort. Adding to our difficulties, we had to modify the elevator due to height issues. In the face of these numerous setbacks, we still managed to have a working moving chassis by the end of the week.
During the week, we had three new students join the team. They all quickly jumped in and have been very helpful in building and modifying the robot.
Soon after the unveiling of this year’s competition, Recycle Rush, we began brainstorming everything from game strategies to designs for our robot. We have met every day and have made plenty of progress in striving towards building a robot that will be proficient in this year’s competition.
This last week, we have spent a great deal of time fine tuning our strategy and coming up with various ways on how to achieve the tasks we want to perform. We have built many prototypes out of wood and aluminum, trying out multiple ideas brought up by team members. We worked on prototypes for collecting totes from the ground along with prototypes for stacking the totes. For collecting totes, we had the general idea of wheels pulling the totes into the robot. For stacking the totes, we built a mechanism using pistons to lift the them up. Next, we created a pair of claws, cut specifically to fit into the grooves under the lid of the totes, to hold the totes. These claws were attached to motors with a chain. We learned that this prototype failed to lift the totes any other way but right side up.
Recent Comments