Hello,
We’re a grade 8 team (so, going to HS next year), this is our first year competing in v5. We had the only Worlds qualifier for our country yesterday, and unfortunately we lost.
My question: Given that the 25/26 game won’t be announced until this year’s Worlds (I think?), what should we focus on between now and then? Presumably not much point continuing to optimize the High Stakes robot, but what might we already start to focus on for next year?
Thank you!
I recommend studying good building skills, coding, good notebook, etc. I would do research on the top teams to understand how to do well, so that you can have a quality robot when the game comes out next year. Practicing with a High Stakes robot can be beneficial to your knowledge of robotics as a whole, as you can use it for building and coding practice.
You might want to get an VIQ kit and see if you can build a robot for that season. You can never get too much design / build / practice time.
Or you could get just the VIQ Rapid Relay balls, and build a V5 robot to play with them. The balls are a little fragile when compared to V5 strength.
Since we dont know the game yet, theres not much preparation to do.
I would suggest just doing a small side projet with vex parts to improve build quality skills.
During last year (we lost at the State competition) we built a swerve drive.
Another thing that you could do to prepare for next season is plan out a journal format and learn CAD software. By planning out a format to approach the design process next year, you can be more prepared for the upcoming season and guarantee that your journal meets all the criteria. As for the CAD software, this can be very helpful for creating a structural robot and can strengthen your journal. CAD can be hard to learn so devoting time to it without worrying about the current season could help you prepare.
Thank you for all the very helpful replies! Will certainly look into those.
If I may ask a follow up query, is there any part of the robot which is meaningfully similar from one year to the next, so they can already start building now? For example if they start working on a quality drive train, is that a productive use of time so they can use that (with perhaps some tweak for game specifics) when the next game comes out?
Thank you!
Hi, I am also getting prepared and I thank you for making this thread because we need to know what to do because we are transitioning into V5 as well.
Building a drive train can be helpful for your planning for next season, though the drive train may not be accurate for the next game. I would perhaps practice making drive trains, but make it easy to change to allow for modifications for the next season. Also, maybe try to make new mechanisms on this robot, ( 2-bar, 4-bar, and try programming new sensors). All this can help you prepare and get ready to succeed next season.
Usually there is no guarantee that we can reuse a previous season’s mechanism for the next season.
Even for drivetrain, the next season’s game might include elements that require the robot to drive up or down a ramp, go over a bump, etc. All these might make a difference to the design.
Still to the suggestions from other posters - learn the “transferable” skills, e.g. quality of build, how to build a 6-bar, how to make use of pneumatics, how to improve your programming, etc.
All these basic, but essential and transferable skills will help you more in the long run.
This changes from game to game, but the drive base is always required for a game. However, i would still caution against building a drive base for the next game. Since drive base designs can vary based on the game type (specifically speed, size, special mechanisms), i would take the above post’s advice and just work on general building skills
Maybe even learn some new skills, such as new power tools, or plastic cutting techniques.