With most teams ending their season in the next month, I would like to publicly analyze some good build/design practice based off of 10 years worth of previous games, and then list a few things I would like to accomplish with my teams and new members during the off-season.
Manipulators:
- Claw: 3.5/10 games
- Roller Intake 7/10 games
Addition of Pneumatics makes claws more probable since they no longer require a motor commitment, unlike roller intakes.
Lifts:
- Strong/short 5/10 (This includes intake 4bars, arm 2bars, and simple 4 bar lifts.)
- Tall 3.75/10 with partial credit towards several games with high lifts being unnecessary but beneficial.
Hoist: 2/10 Hasn’t been since Starstruck. However, adding a pneumatics based transmission to shift a gear so that drivetrain can operate a winch or other subsystem… probably a good choice going forward.
Chassis Designs
- Building with Ground Clearance in Mind: 5.5/10 games
- Pushing in mind: 4/5 most recent games, less necessary in older games.
- U/H Chassis instead of Box chassis to make room for intaking elements: 8/10 games
The rest of these are just some goals I have for teams to get to before their next season. I think they are fundamental to a good team.
Programming:
- Inertial and Vision sensor based turning PIDS for chasing objects, tuned well.
- Simple debugging functions and full understanding of terminal printing and screen data.
- Using line readers and distance sensors for proximity sensing.
- Commenting/Documenting code.
Driving:
- 1 vs 2 stick arcade.
- Developing practice regiment.
Notebooking:
- Collect examples of different timeline, evaluation, and data collection models.
- Collect fundamental code snippets and print them out, like basic driver code, autonomous scripting, basic PIDs.
- Checklists for pre/mid/post matches, prep for competitions, Alliance selection, Building, Tinkering with a built and functioning robot, updating programming, etc.
Do y’all have any reflections or suggestions?