DEWBOT VII
The team set two very aggressive goals for 2011:
- Win 1 Regional Event
- Attend Championship event in St. Louis 27-30 April, 2011.
DEWBOT VII will be designed to meet the specific challenges posed by FRC's 2011 game: Logomotion.
To help meet these goals, the team did a number of things differently this year:
- A new front-end design process to help us set clear, early strategic objectives and specification was instituted. We piloted this process in December.
- For the first time, team 1640 built two robots: Prime and Deux. Prime goes to the competitions. Deux stays home for driver practice and as a software & hardware development platform. Duex graciously provides spare parts for competitions.
- A (nearly) full-size practice field was set up at the Downingtown Robotics Center, enabling driver practice under realistic conditions.
- Our mill was set up and used almost continuously during build season. The lathe also received more use this year than during the past six. With the help of new mentor Ben Kellom, accuracy became a 1640 hallmark. This year, interchangable parts really are!
Contents
DEWBOT VII Build
Build season is the heart of the FRC year. It is the 45 days during which the team's students and mentors put their hearts, minds and hands into designing and building a great robot. Paradoxically, the time seems both far too short and much too long.
Starting with a cold January 8th morning and ending up in the middle of an even colder February night. The chronicles of the DEWBOT VII Build season make interesting reading of how we all band together to perform an almost impossible task of designing, building and testing a robot in such a short time frame. Associated with each weeks build are pictures showing happy (and towards the end, tired) roboteers and mentors hard at work.
Design Details
Drive Train
January 10th 2011: The big debate of the night The Drive Train. Pivot vs. Tank (6WD)
Probably one of the most important decision to make for the robot. There were many pros and cons for both sides. Do we continue with the drive train we pioneered last year, with the increased knowledge on how to build, program and drive it, and the added agility that come with but lose the 8 motors it takes and the processor resources it will eat up?
Or...
Do you go with a simpler design, with can be created quickly, anyone can drive, uses less motors and processor, and can leave more time for working other aspects of the robot. However with this, sacrifice the maneuverability of the other option. While everyones input was listened to, the two main groups that needed to answer this were our drivers and our programmers.
The winner: Pivot, with 7 votes against 6WD's 2. Our programmers and drivers were confident in their skills and felt strongly that the reward in agility was worth the risk. We decided to go with what was our most valuable asset last year, agility. We were the fastest most agile Bot out there.
Mechanical Scoring
Scoring is defined in the 2011 Game Manual. We made an Excel interface that calculates the autonomous, teleoperated, and minibot race scores to help us determine strategy.
From a mechanical standpoint, there are two distict scoring systems:
- A system to hang Ubertubes (in autonomous) and Logo Pieces (in teleop) on the Scoring Grid, and to collect Logo Pieces from the Human Players or pick them off the floor ( The Arm); and
- A Minibot with its deployment system for scoring bonus points during the end game.
...
The passive assist surgical tubing for our 4-Bar linkage is 241" long with wraps at 200, 132, 93.25, and 48.5".
Programming
Preliminary analysis of autonomous mode scenarios:
Electrical
Drive / Tactical
Click here to enter Drive Team Page. Contains robot control information and player information.
Strategy/Scouting
View from the Front, View from the Top - what the field looks like in play, 28 Jan 11
Minibot Deployment Tactics - technical & non-technical minibot deployment considerations, 23 Jan 11
Strategic Analysis - potential strategies as well as what others are likely to do, 27 Feb 11
Events
Baltimore Area Alliance FRC Workshop
- 6-November-2010. Very helpful and educational. Our thanks to the BAA for their gracious invitation. (6) attended from 1640.
Move into Downingtown Robotics Center
- In November, Downingtown Area Robotics moved from the Micken Building into a 17,000 ft2 warehouse at 320 Boot Road, Downingtown. This is a great space for robotics, allowing a full-scale practice field. Alas, no sense of permanence. Our 6th home (and by-far very best to-date).
Carly, Selina & Garrison organize our workspace within the Downingtown Robotics Center
Power tool alley
Storage closet
Practice Kick-off
- Team 1640 conducted a Practice Kick-off on 11 & 12-December 2010 in preparation of the real deal. A formal Design Process was introduced and tested during this exercise. 2006 Aim High game rules were employed for the robot basis, with the exception of the control system, which utilized 2010 standards.
- Game simulation using students as robots proved very effective and provided very good insights into the game play and requirements for winning matches.
- As always, the most difficult part of strategic decision making was in deciding which options not to pursue. Need to work on this.
CPR Training
- Nine students, mentors and parents from Team 1640 received CPR training and 2-year ASHI certification on 18-Dec at the Uwchlan Ambulance Corps.
Finger Lakes Regional
- The team had a rough start, with some cRIO problems which took a while to resolve. In the end, however, we were selected for the 4th alliance and made it to the semifinals. We were defeated by the 1st alliance, who went on to win the Regional.
- We scored reasonably well in teleop, up to 4 logo pieces per match and always in the desired positions, but clearly could use more practice. There are mechanical and programming issues to resolve prior to the Philadelphia Regional as well.
Outreach
Downingtown Robotics Center Open House
- DAR hosted an Open House on the evening of 15-December.
Processes
Media
Sub-Teams
People
Team Sab-BOT-age is what it is only due to the efforts of the people involved. DEWBOT VII's success will be in the hands of the students, mentors and parents engaged. The team's very existance is possible only through the gracious generosity of our sponsors.
See our other robots at FRC Team 1640
