Hello all! I would first like to apologize for the lack of posts as of late. We intended to keep up with a schedule of Monday and Friday posts, so you would know what we were planning on doing and what ended up getting done each week. However, the recent inclement weather, combined with our school exams, made robotics more sporadic than expected, and thus our blog has stagnated. Our sincerest apologies for this, and we hope to get back on schedule immediately, starting with today! Despite the strange scheduling, this week has still had some great progress.
The Business Team: In the past two (ish) weeks, the Business Team has been cracking down on awards. This past Thursday, we completed and sent in our submission for the Digital Animation Award. We were very excited to be able to finally have a submission for this award, as our team was forced to avoid it due to time constraints in previous years. No matter if we win or lose, we are glad that we got the experience of making an animation; we learned a lot about timing, planning, and other aspects that will make next year’s submission even better! Outside of that award, the team has also been hard at work on the FIRST Impact Award. It has both an essay submission and a video submission, and so the Business Team has been splitting their efforts between the two to ensure equal progress on them. With the video specifically, we hope to top last year’s and once again make something that we are really proud of.
The Build Team: With the arrival of the chassis and general competition kit, the Build Team has had their hands full! Some of the team has been assembling the chassis for a few days; it has been a somewhat arduous effort, however, once finished, the chassis alone will be of great help to the programmers, as they will finally be able to begin testing code on the actual bot. Another chunk of the team has been dedicated towards building a test version of the charging station. This is a vital part of our team’s success, as the charging station is one of the harder variables in the game. Being able to test our robot’s sense of balance, and potentially work towards automating it entirely, would give us a huge advantage. Finally, the last third of the team has been working on assembling the claw system and the arm system. We have decided on a final version for both, and construction is going smoothly thus far.
The Programming Team: While waiting for the Build Team to create a prototype of our robot, the Programming Team has been chipping away at vision detection. Since success in this year’s game is so dependent on vision, we plan on making our robot’s vision be the absolute best possible. The team is starting to adapt the Limelight system we are currently using to include recognition of April Tags, which are small pieces of paper with black markings that computers can use to calculate distance. If we are able to accomplish this, our robot could look at either the reflective tape or the April Tags and calculate its distance from the grid, which would in turn allow it to automatically place the cargo we have with excellent precision. Having this ability would greatly improve our chances of getting to playoffs, and would also be great experience for the newer Programming Team members!
Well, that’s about all for this week. Once again, we apologize for the sudden stoppage, and we hope you will continue to tune in for the following weeks! Goodbye, and stay safe!
