Physics of the Flywheel Launcher

We’ve been to the competition this weekend and our flywheel accuracy was deteriorating through the day.

This is what happens if, instead of dropping the power to the motors as the ball goes through, you actually increase the power prematurely before the ball have been launched (see the graph few post above).

To make things even worse this was a gear in the motor whose IME was providing input to the speed control algorithm. Ouch…