Robotics log 4

I am posting this later then I intended but there has been much going on. Our Competition is over! And Off season has officially begun. There is much to talk about with the competition. Overall everything went off great, however not better than I expected. Since drawbacks at getting the proper parts we needed in time, thus crippling the launching system we had original planned, we put on a much simpler dropping system. The simplicity of the design brought me the hope that we would not have many or any hitches at comp. There were however two big obstacles we faced, both of which I thought were taken care of. I am far from bitter about these thought because it just teaches me more, and allows me to add more to my guide book so future teams don’t make the same mistakes.

These mistakes were: 1. our programming failed pretty badly, see every match is only two minutes long. The first 15 seconds is autonomous mode, meaning the robot can only be guided by programming no human interference. In previous years this time period is usually insignificant and our attempts at programming a good autonomous has lead to more problems than good. So this year we decided that having one would probably not be worth it. Still, I insisted that we make one just in case, then we could simply upload it (I would find out later that I should have followed up with Ian, as this was never done). At the comp, unforeseen consequences arouse from not having one, it allowed the opposing teams to score a lot of points on us. So I decided it was best to put the code on, and then we ran into the problem noted in the parentheses above. Once we finally got our auto-mode up we saw that we had the wrong version of the software on our robot, this prevented us from taking full advantage of the auto-mode. By the time we got everything figured out we had already been through 4 matches where we were sitting ducks for the first 15 secs.

The other problem was that we didn’t read the rules carefully enough; the door mechanism on our ramps was designed to fall outside the edge of the robot so it would guide the balls into their targets. Having something go outside the edge of your robot had never been illegal until this year. We were informed about this in the middle of the comp (right when we were still trying to figure out the stuff above), so we had to do some quick thinking and move the doors up more so they would fall within the bot. But since they were made to guide the balls, we lost a lot of the control which we previously had. In turn we were not able to score as well as before.

Both of these problems were ones which could have been easily handled before comp if we had noticed them. It is not the fault of any one person, instead it is just the lack of members, and if we had 2 or more people on each station we could have been able to see that part of the rules or noticed the need for auto-mode. Other then that the competition turned out great, the drive system and strength of our bot worked 100% better than expected. We did not make it to the finals but in 32^nd out of 60 teams. This was far better than our first year of 58^th out of 59 teams.

I am worried for next year though. There are two things that must happen or the team will not survive. Sebastian and Ian who will both be running the team need to mature and take a larger role in the team, being a captain is not something that is easily done as I found out this year. I honestly do not think either of them can handle it at the moment. That is why I am planning to delegate it between the two. Besides that, they can’t be asked to perform their best when they are the only ones on the team. Currently there are three people on the team next year. This is not enough. Recruitment is a must; also more help from the school is definitely needed.