Photos below are sorted from oldest to newest in a timeline. This season's robot's name was Trouble, and it will be referred to that name for the rest of the timeline. (Left: Trouble's final look for Qualifiers!)
To start off the season in Mid-November to Mid-December, we tried brainstorming ideas for how we could achieve goals within the competition- how would we grab rings, how would we haul wobble goals, how would we shoot rings into the scoring goals? The first (remote) brainstorming exercise we did in the season was coming up with designs for shooting mechanisms. We also had teammates observe select robotics team's YouTube videos that demonstrated their different intake, shooting, and arm mechanisms that we took notes on.
This section (1/15-1/16/21) contains lots of prototypes, and progress on the motors and wheels of Trouble.
January 15, 2021: Early motors.
Very rough and early ring intake mechanism sketch.
Interior of a motor sketch study.
Right: rough brainstorming/prototype sketch for the whole robot. You can see that we considered putting rows of wheels and/or "stars" (entrapption stars) to grab rings and pull them up to the shooter.
Above and Left: Attaching wheels to the motor, and the wheels to the robot. (1/26/21)
During Mid-January to Early February, we began rapid development of Trouble's wheels and intake mechanism.
Right: Seeing if the vertical rails fit in the size restrictions for FIRST robots. (2/2/21)
Above: Early Trouble with early intake + shooting mechanism designs and early intake mechanism cover design.
More early intake mechanism design, variation with 8 small wheels.
In Mid-March, we started to make progress and development on Trouble's arm mechanism and started wire work on Trouble.
Left: (3/2/21) Trouble, all wired up.
Right: (3/10/21) arm base covered with gorilla tape for protection.
3D-printed team number plates!!
Above: New molded arm-gripper to grab the Wobble Goals! (4/24/21)
Below: teammate Domini P. driving Trouble and double-checking intake mechanism!