The team has been busy working towards completing our goals for this week. We have made excellent progress and are excited to see how everything comes together before our first competition at the Midwest Regional in Chicago, the first weekend of March.
Jacob, Karl, and Enya showcasing the Wood Shop's accurate replica of the Power Port field element.
Fabrication
The wood shop immediately set to work fabricating the playing field elements that are essential for robot development. The Power Port objective was completed first which allowed the shooter development group to calibrate their designs against a real target.
The metal shop took the designs from the CAD department and began assembly of the drive train and the rotating magazine that will hold the power cells.
Programming
The team is coding a vision tracking system called Limelight for the autonomous portion of the game. The robot will need to navigate the playing field without player intervention for the first 15 seconds. Limelight will help the robot to accurately target the Power Port shooting objectives to score bonus points which may give the team an early lead in competitions.
Alex discussing the drive train with the CAD design team during a working session.
CAD
One of the most important parts of a great robot is a great design. Our CAD team drew inspiration from prior years to come up with a new and exciting robot for the 2020 season. Being able to modify designs on the fly helps the team see their ideas come to life on the screen before committing to fabrication. We can’t wait to see the result of their hard work in the coming weeks!
Strategy
The primary focus of this week has been developing the algorithms that will be used during competition to come up with the best strategies and assist with alliance selections. The team is hard at work identifying which key metrics will ensure maximum efficiency on the playing field. Strategy is preparing to train its scouting team which will navigate the pits at events to gather as much valuable information as possible about both alliance partners and opponents.
Dominick wires up a Power Distribution Panel which reroutes power from the battery to other systems.
Electrical
The Electrical team has been preparing their circuitry for integration into the drive train. Once all of the pieces come together, our robot will finally be able to move under it’s own power!
Business
The team has been planning several outreach events and demos for the upcoming weeks. We are hosting an event at the Mukwonago YMCA on January 24th where students and mentors will be showcasing last season’s world class robot to the younger members of the community to promote STEM and creativity. The week of February 17th, we will be hosting our annual Open House at Mukwonago High School as well as a SWENext (Society of Women’s Engineering) event.