Robot

ROBOT

Each year FLL Challenge teams are tasked with building and coding an autonomous robot to compete in a robot game completing missions for points on a mat. At competitions we share our robot design process in our judging session, and we also get to compete in the robot game. You can learn more about our robot, TAG (which stands for Team Alpha Geek) below.

Identify

After looking at all of the missions for this season's robot game, we decided which teammates would work from which home area. We wanted to have an even number of experienced coders on each side to help newer team members gain experience with SPIKE. Each coding team was called red side, or blue side corresponding to the home area they would operate from. Each side then decided which missions they would go for. We collectively decided that each side would go for missions close to their home area, and required similar motions like pushing or lifting. We also wanted to choose missions that we could get a lot of points for, while being the most reliable. We discussed our game plan as a group and created a plan for us to follow.

Teammates building our robots.

Design

After knowing what our robot needed to include, we built 2 identical robots, one for each home area, so that both red side and blue side could code at the same time, which allowed us to get way more things done at each meeting. To build our robot, we worked in pairs, and everybody got a chance to code and build attachments. One unique thing about our team is every member codes!

Teammates coding at Sectionals.

Iterate

Of course, we didn't just stick with all of our original robot and attachment designs. One attachment that ended up going through many iterations, was our one-way-door, that we use to collect various items on Red Side. While we worked in pairs to build our robot, other members of our team were brainstorming ideas on how to complete various missions. Our robot also went through iterations, like when we changed the weight distribution so that our robot could turn more easily. Another iteration was when we changed from normal gears, to 4 knob gears, reducing gear slippage by almost 100%!

Communication

With each side using a different robot, we had to make sure that the robots remained identical throughout the entire season. To do this, we periodically checked the differences between the robots. If we found any, one of us would go home and make them identical again. We also wanted to make sure that each side knew what the other side was doing. We achieved this by creating a robot log that we filled out after every meeting, taking note of what each coding side did. We also created a GANTT chart based on the Engineering Design Process (Identify, Design, Create, Iterate, Communicate) to have a plan for our season.

Our team's GANTT chart.

More Mechanisms

One thing that we decided to improve on from last season was to learn about more mechanisms, and how to use gears to make our attachments stronger. We met over the off-season, and used books written by Yoshito Isogawa to learn about more mechanisms, like rack & pinions, and turntables. These have been very helpful during our season, and we used them to create our attachments, like the 'Spinner', which we use to activate the 'SONAR discovery' mission. The 'Spinner' uses gears to transfer the motion of the spot where the attachment connects with the motor, to the spot where it actually activates the 'SONAR discovery' mission.

Watch a video of TAG 3.0 from Submerged (24-25)

Watch a video of TAG 2.0 from Masterpiece (23-24)

Check out some pictures of our robot from this season!

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