As we enter the second week, we have been designing the main structure of this year’s robot. Working over the week and going into the weekend, we’ve made many sketches and calculations along with dimensioning and optimizing the alignment of mechanisms. Starting from the base up, we have the drivetrain. This year we have decided to use a Tank Drive because this fast pace game challenges us to have speed in our driving rather than accuracy. We saw many advantages to a Tank Drive than a Swerve drive in that testing a swerve drive would be very risky for our software team. We have never used a Swerve Drive for our robots before, although arguably useful, the better alternative is the Tank Drive. Additionally, our drivers are already familiar with the controls that accompany it. This simple design allows us to maximize the spacing on a 29.5x29.5 square inch drivetrain and reduces the spacing issue we’ve had in the past between mechanisms and electrical designing.
What better way to start the first week of the season, than to start with a full week of finals! Even with finals on our schedules, we have worked after school to prototype, design, build, and test potential mechanisms that we may implement this season. As the week progressed, we prototyped, worked on essays, and surfed the internet for new ideas and other feedback. Our build team has completed a vast majority of the practice field. It was great to see the Upper and Lower Hubs completed. On the same day, we finished building a shooter prototype so we were able to extensively test that in terms of compression and angle adjustment. As we prototype, we start to hold multiple design reviews. In these critical design reviews, we essentially have broken down profiles and ideas of the soon-to-be robot. Making sure we follow guidelines from our season-strategy priority list, we take into consideration the benefits and necessary improvements our robot must have this year to compete vigorously i