This week our team spent most of its time working in our four subteams: business, programming, build, and design. We had some full team meetings to go over the design process where we talked about the importance of documenting our progress during the season. We also spoke about using a Gantt chart system in the near future. A Gantt chart system will help us stay organized and on top of everything that needs to be done.
The business team worked on our business plan and our submission for the chairman’s award, which is due by February 8th. They, along with many members from other subteams, began scouting teams that we will be competing against, both by watching their previous matches and visiting their websites. We also started planning on how to scout at the competition. With this year’s emphasis on strategy, our usual scouting methods are going to have to change. The main focuses were to determine what information we need, what times we can get that information (during a match, pit scouting, etc.) and then figuring out how to find that information efficiently–as nice as a 15-person scouting team would be, we understand that it’s unrealistic.
Each member of the design team worked on CADing a different robot component, sometimes with students creating more than one version to give the team options for our design. All that now remains to be done is to finish connecting all of the pieces.
The build team split into groups to start various aspects of the robot. Some assembled the frame from the Kit of Parts and began to assemble a second robot with the same dimensions from spare parts. Others began prototyping different lifting mechanisms and calculating speeds with corresponding weights of the robot. Some finished repairs on our robot from last year’s game (Steamworks) by improving the climbing mechanism and building gearboxes for the different mechanisms. They also began to collect materials to build field elements in preparation for testing our robot and to give the drive team a chance to practice.
The programming team finished writing pseudocode for our different subsystems and autonomous modes. To do so, they had to figure out the possible paths to get to the switch, scale and autoline. They also re-imaged the RoboRio and protocase in preparation for next week and set up Linux on the laptops to work for the 2018 FRC build environment. They, along with the build team, decided what sensors and actuators could be used on each mechanism and from there, chose the best options.
Just four weeks left, and we can’t wait to see how everyone’s robots turn out!