6/14/2017

Rookie Season Lessons Learned

1. The team purchased a sheet of ⅛” aluminum but only used about ⅓ of it. The aluminum was hard to cut because we didn’t have a machine shop available to us. We used a jigsaw with a metal cutting blade, but the blades dulled rapidly and it took a long time to cut out what shapes we needed. I would recommend trying to make flat surfaces from a sheet of polycarbonate instead, especially if it doesn’t have to be that strong. Polycarbonate is lighter and easier to cut, but won’t shatter when struck because it is flexible.
2. Gearboxes slow the rpm’s of a motor, but increase the torque you can get from the motor itself. Don’t use a gearbox if you want to direct drive from a motor for something like a flywheel for launching spherical projectiles.
3. It is important to order the desired parts for the robot as quickly as possible, or be very confident of the part you are ordering. Our team found that we were being crunched on time due to the process of ordering and shipping parts needed to finish our mechanisms. A few times we ordered parts that were not what worked best, and it was a lengthy period to order a different part that worked better.
4. During the competitions, teams are able to work on their robots in the pit area. There are rookie teams and experienced teams in this area. Of course teams want to win, but they do more than help themselves. The different teams help each other with fixing their robots or tactics on the field. Helping other teams creates bonds and these bonds form into alliances. The stronger the alliance, the better chance they have to win the entire event. It is important to either help other teams or ask for help from them.
5. Don’t be afraid of pneumatics. We assumed that using the pneumatics system would be really complex and that focusing our efforts on motor control would be easier. We learned to use the pneumatics after the end of the season and it was really easy to do. We could have added further complexity to our robot that might have made us a little more competitive.
6. Make your bumpers reversible! During competition you are going to change from red to blue, and vice versa, a whole lot of times. You only get so much time between matches and you don’t want to spend all of it doing bumper changes. Find someone that can use a sewing machine and get some velcro tape. Find a tutorial on making double sided bumpers online, they are easy to follow. We made a set of red and a set of blue bumpers originally, and we spent a lot of time changing our bumpers in a panic. It was much more relaxing to be at an event when we could change our bumpers quickly.
7. We learned that it is very important to try to recruit as many people as possible to join your team. When you have more people it really helps to spread out the work. You can even give certain groups of people a set task in order for them to learn how to complete that task more efficient and with a better understanding of how that certain specialty works. For example you could put a few people focused on programming, some focused on building the robot, and some people focused on wiring up all the motors and getting them to work right. By splitting up all the work it makes building your robot build much quicker and it makes for fewer mistakes because everyone is becoming proficient at the task they are accomplishing.
8. Put together a scouting form, either on paper or digitally. We did not know that teams would come by and ask for the capabilities of the robot while we were in the pit. When it came time to select alliances during the playoff portion of each district even, teams have a list put together based on the scouting reports. You never know if you’ll be a rookie teams that gets really lucky on your random alliance selections for the qualification matches and you could end up as an alliance captain.