Michigan State Championship Event (Week 7)

During the opening ceremony of the Michigan State Championship, the MC talked about the history of the Michigan State Championship. The district system started the same year when we were a rookie so this is the fourth time there was a Michigan State Championship. He gave some statistics about the 64 teams that were there how many times they have been at the Michigan State Championship. We were pleasantly surprised that we were one of a small group of teams that made it in all four years.

After the Niles District Competition, we knew we had to improve our robot to be competitive. Our robot never balanced a single time successfully at Niles. That may be good enough at a district event but not at the State Championship. We spent a lot of time designing and building an arm that would rotate down to lower the bridge and rotate down further to help balance the robot on the bridge. Unfortunately, we just barely finished putting it on the practice robot and we were only able to test it once lowering the bridge. We didn't have enough time to test it more because we had to take it out to transfer it to the competition robot once we got to the State Championship event.

We had issues with the chain skipping on the sprocket and we were finally able to fix it Friday afternoon. Unfortunately due to the circumstances, we were not able to demonstrate to the other teams what we can do. We had two more matches on Saturday to show our robot’s ability. The first one was the first match of Saturday right after the opening ceremony when almost everyone there would be watching. In the hybrid mode we shot the two balls in, and as soon as the teleop mode started, we drove to the side of the alliance bridge to lower it to let the two balls roll down. Unfortunately the student who was operating the arm got overly excited and moved the arm down too fast, pushing the bridge down quickly, and continued to push. The arm has so much power that it actually flipped us backwards. I knew at the time that no team would pick us for the elimination round because of this, and unfortunately I was right.

We also did not win a single team award. The only bright moment this weekend was when one of our co-team captains, Ryan Hoyt, winning one of the 6 spots for the Dean’s List Finalist from Michigan. Now he will be competing in St. Louis for the 10 Dean’s List winner spots.

Fortunately for us, we already pre-registered to go to St. Louis so we have another chance to show what our robot can actually do.

Niles District Event (Week 4)

This was our first time going to Niles Michigan for a competition. We had heard from others that the gym was small, but we were pleasantly surprised to find that there were plenty of seats. We only made minor changes to the robot since the robot performed well at Waterford. Once again, we set a goal to reach the finals and win two awards.

We did very well in the qualifying round, winning 9 of 12 matches. We ended up seeding 7^th and we were picked 5^th overall by Team 27. We then selected Team 3572. We had a great alliance in the elimination round. Team 27 is a great scorer in teleop and they can get the two balls on the coopertition bridge during autonomous. Team 3572 is very good at scoring the two balls in the hybrid mode. We won the quarterfinals and then beat the number 1 alliance in the semifinals. In the finals, Team 27’s robot hit the wall really hard and broke down. We had no chance with the excellent defense that our opposing alliance was doing. We lost both matches quickly.

We reached our goal to get to the finals and we also won two awards: Website award and Entrepreneurship award. The team did a great job at Niles.

Waterford District Event (Week 2)

This is the first year we did not participate in a Week 1 competition event. In the first few years as a new team, it was better for us to play in a week 1 event since it is more of a level playing field when nobody has played the game yet and no one knows what to expect. However, last year we tried to design an all-around robot and ran out of time to fully test the robot which resulted in our robot not working properly at our week 1 competition. Based on that experience, we decided against week 1 events. It was a good decision because we ran out of time again this year so the extra week was very useful.

We arrived at Waterford High School with high expectations. During the build season, we put equal emphasis on the building of the robot and the preparation work for winning the awards. Our goal was to get to the finals and win two awards.

Competition was fierce. Our robot worked better than we expected even though we had very limited time to calibrate the shooter. Our programmer did a fantastic job putting in a lot of last minute changes. It was nice to finally see the fruits of our labor when the bridge lowering device worked and we could shoot two balls into the basket during hybrid mode.

The semifinals match was very close. We tied after the first two matches. In the third match, we were ahead by 8 points but were accidentally flipped by our alliance partner when we tried to balance on the bridge with them. We ended up losing by two points.

However we were pleasantly surprised to win 3 awards at the event. We won the Best Website award, Engineering Inspiration award, and Imagery award. I was most proud of our team winning the Imagery award. In our rookie year, our robot got laughed at because it was built with the cheapest material we could find. The students felt bad when they saw other team’s robot with nice paint and expensive polycarbonate sheets. In the last two years, our robot looked progressively better but we focused more on function than the look. This year, discussion on robot appearance started right in the beginning. We decided to follow the same theme as our pit, website and newsletter. The robot looks very nice and it is easy to identify that it is our team.

2012 Build Season Week 6

We made a lot of progress this week, but we also had some setbacks. First, the good news is that award submissions were done on time without any issues. Also, the robot is finally moving and we are able to control the shooting speed well using P control alone. The bumpers are also done. The bad news is that the robot is too bouncy with the pneumatics wheels, the hood on the shooter is too high when rotated up all the way, the bridge lowering device is not strong enough to push the bridge down, and the robot is about 8 pounds over the weight limit. Fortunately, we have solutions for every issue and we are confident that everything will work. We are on schedule to bag the robot and bumpers. We will use our 30 pounds withholding limit and the access period to finish the last minutes changes. This year we are going to Week Two and Week Four district events so we have a little more time.

2012 Build Season Week 5

We had a good week this week with a lot accomplished. The practice robot is almost done and should be ready for testing by the end of the week.  We have started building the competition robot. For the first time in our history, we are spending time to decide how to make the competition robot look good, instead of just being functional. I think it is a sign of the maturity of the team.

All the award submissions that are due this Thursday are ready. It was a great team effort, and I am impressed with the results. The awards sub team will now concentrate on preparing the presentations. The strategy manual is done, and we will finalize it at our next team meeting. The scouting sheets are done, and they also need to be finalized.

2012 Build Season Week 4

The building of the robot this week progressed very slowly. We underestimated how long it takes to assemble all of the different components together. We also had to modify the shooter design to make it work, which further delayed our progress. Also, some critical parts were not ordered due to miscommunication and we have to wait for them before we can finish the assembly. The only good news is that we started on the electrical board ahead of schedule. These obstacles tend to happen every year, and we are always able to somehow pull it off through insane scrambling at the end. I am not worried about it at all.

2012 Build Season Week 3

Week 3 was finals week at our school. In past years, we didn’t meet during finals week until Friday, when the final exams were over. This year the team captains, who are mostly seniors, wanted to continue to meet during finals week. As expected, they were the only ones who showed up, in addition to the mentors.

At the end of Week 3, the CAD model was 99% complete except for some sensors. The practice robot chassis and the above chassis frame were also completed. The belting for the ball conveyor system was cut to length and welded together. Also, the fabrication of the frame parts for the competition robot was started.

We have a new design for our bumpers this year. It is easier to build, and it will take even less time to change. In our first year, it took 5 to 10 minutes to change the bumpers from one color to the other. In our second year, we managed cut it down to about 1 minute. Last year, it was a 2 piece bumper design that took about 15 seconds. This year, we projected that it would take 5 to 10 seconds to change the bumpers. This is part of our continuous improvement mentality without compromising the structural integrity of the bumper attachment system.

2012 Build Season Week 2

This year we are using a new build process that the team captains put into place. Instead of making parts in random order or wait until we have all the parts before we assemble, we divided up the robot into multiple subsystems. We staggered the fabrication and assembly of the subsystems in logical order to maximize the use of the tools and minimize wait time. We also standardized how parts are attached together and pre-made those standard parts in week one. All of these small attachment brackets are in the CAD model and even the holes of the rivets are pre-planned. The result is a very systematic way of building and the robot comes together like furniture from IKEA.

One of the key for this success is by spending more time in CAD. All the attachments are planned and all the holes are predrilled on the drill press so there is no issue of hard to reach area for drilling. Another side benefit is the quality of the joints. Every piece is square to one another with no gaps unlike our previous years’ robots.

By the end of week two, the CAD model is done except for the turret and shooter. The shooter design is very intricate and will probably take the most amount of time to build. We hope to have the robot structure finished by Day 28 and electrical and pneumatics done by Day 34. This will give us plenty of time to calibrate the shooter and other sensors.

2012 Build Season Week 1

The kickoff at Novi High School was well organized and they had some excellent speakers. I stayed in the afternoon to give a seminar like the last 3 years. The topic this year was on Scouting in FIRST Robotics Competition. One group of students took the Kit of Parts and did the inventory. Others went home to read the game rules. In the evening we had our first team meeting to discuss the game and did the QFD analysis of the game to select the most important attributes of the robot.

On Sunday afternoon, we again reviewed the game to make sure all students have the same understanding of the game. We also went over the QFD results. Then we broke up into smaller groups to brainstorm on different aspects of the robot. One group did the bridge raising and lowering device. One group did the ball collection system and one worked on the shooting system. It was a productive meeting as we had everybody’s participation.

A lot of work was accomplished this first week. CAD was about 75% done but there were still a lot of finishing touches to do. The partial practice field was almost finished with the new game elements. We are still waiting for the basketball rims to arrive. The awards team and the strategy team had started their work. The programming team was successful in using LabVIEW 2011 to connect to the 2010 robot. We drove the 2010 robot and tried to balance it on the bridge. It was much harder than we thought although the weight distribution of the team version was wrong making it difficult to balance.