Hello world!
This is Team 1241: THEORY6 here. We’re so excited to share details on our schedule and progress throughout the season this year. Check back every week for new posts throughout the build season and possibly the competition season.
And so it begins…
After deciding on our robot’s goals and priorities, we spend much of the first week focusing on building field elements and assembling prototypes. Looking at field drawings is one thing, but getting to see them in real life is another. Once you get some field elements built, spend some time to play around with them. If you have any robots from previous years that are still operational, bring those out and see how they fit on the field. We brought our 2016 robot back from the dead only to ram it onto some field objects. Mamba may have brought us a lot of success in 2016, but it took us to new heights this past weekend.
If you don’t have space to keep full field elements at your place and you rely on other team facilities for practice, try collaborating with them on constructing field elements. If you don’t already have a relationship with a team in your area that you visit for scrimmages, now’s a perfect time to reach out. Chances are those teams are busy building field elements and they could use some extra help. Luckily enough, The Compass Alliance has created Help Hubs, the perfect resource to find teams in the area willing to open their doors for local teams. Just click here to find a team near you!
Now onto prototyping. Each year, we build a full wooden robot prototype. We’ve found it to be a helpful first step in our design process, but we realize it is a tad overkill. At the least, you should play around with some simplified intake prototypes to make sure the game pieces react as you envisioned. Prototyping is a continuous process, especially with intakes. For most teams throughout the season, being able to get ownership of game pieces with more ease is the most feasible route to improving robot performance. Last year, we continued to iterate our intake up to Detroit Championships.
Here are a few examples of the prototype for our 2018 robot, Nightcrawler:
I’ve made an Intake Inspiration playlist specific for this years game pieces here. See you next week!
