week of January 24
Monday: Monday’s meeting was the Automated Admiralty and Automated Alternates’ 27th meet, and the teams spent their time improving their robots for future runs. The team for MARK 1 consists of Anton, Daniel, Kyle, Mason, Nathan, Sarah, Simon, and Yash, and most worked on improving the robot and adding accessories to it. Anton started to embroider designs for MARK 1, while Simon and Mason 3D printed a skull for the robot too. Daniel, Kyle, and Nathan polished the autonomous mode for MARK 1 as well as practiced driving. Simon, with the assistance of Daniel, Mason, and Yash also started to brainstorm ideas on how to out-reach to younger students. The team for HÉRMIÓNE, The Automated Admiralty, consists of Anthony, Arnav, Bennet, Eve, Jacob, Paulie, Tyler, and Zach. Most continued to upgrade the gripper and improve the code. Anthony worked on the blog, while Eve continued creating the mascot head. Arnav, Bennett, Jacob, and Paulie added screws to the gripper claw, experimented with an “extending claw”, and practiced driving. Finally, Tyler and Zach did some slight alterations to the code to improve HÉRMIÓNE’s performance.
Tuesday: Tuesday’s meeting was the Automated Admiralty and Automated Alternates’ 28th meet, and the teams worked on improving HÉRMIÓNE and MARK 1 as well as did some practice runs and one actual run each. The team for MARK 1, the Automated Alternates worked on adding aesthetics as well as scoring points in the practice and actual runs. Anton, Daniel, Mason, and Simon made different “accessories” for the robot, such as an embroidery design and a 3D printed dinosaur skull, which started printing that day. In addition, during this period, Sarah continued editing the engineering notebooks, as well as taking and posting photos for the notebook and Instagram. Kyle and Nathan worked on MARK 1’s autonomous coding and did some runs. In MARK 1’s practice run, they scored 94 points and did perfectly during autonomous, while they didn’t do that well on the intake of freight after the autonomous portion. After the practice run, MARK 1 did one actual run, scoring 88 points and receiving two penalties. Next, the team for HÉRMIÓNE, the Automated Admiralty worked on runs, as well as minor design plans. Anthony updated the blog as well as collaborated with Eve for the “pit” design and planning a mascot design for the side of HÉRMIÓNE. Tyler and Zach continued making edits to HÉRMIÓNE’s code so it can perform better during the runs and in general. Arnav, Bennet, Jacob, and Paulie built a backup claw and also did runs like MARK 1. During their practice run, HÉRMIÓNE scored 111 points by doing key things such as balancing the “freight tower”. After the practice run, HÉRMIÓNE’s actual run scored 133 points, which was the team's new high score.
Videos of both runs below!
Wednesday: Wednesday’s meeting was the team's 29th meet, and the teams mostly focused on finishing their runs. Team shirts also arrived! The Automated Alternates did two runs today including multiple practice runs. MARK 1’s practice run scored 78 points, but it did have some problems with the duck wheel. Their first run scored 126 points, which was MARK 1’s high score, while their second run scored 18 points. Once the runs were completed, the team was asked to answer some reflection questions, which were “What worked well?”, “What do we need to work on?”, and “What are potential things to tweak/add to the robot?” For “What worked well?” the team responded with, “Our intake mostly worked well, with our arm working very well. While, our autonomous, when working, was flawless.” Next, for “What do we need to work on?” the team responded with, “Our autonomous portion was fairly inconsistent and we had a couple of unnecessary changes.” Finally, for “What are potential things to tweak/add to robot?” the team responded with, “We need to fix the autonomous portion and get the intake mechanism more consistent.” Moving onto the Automated Admiralty: they also did two runs and a practice run. During the practice run, HÉRMIÓNE scored 114 points, but did have some autonomous issues in the beginning, which were resolved shortly after. Their first run scored 136 points, which beat their original high score, and their second run scored 73 points, which was the team's worst run. Once the runs were completed, the team was asked the same reflection questions. For “What worked well?” the team responded with, “The claw worked really well and driving was good.” For “What do we need to work on?” the team responded with, “The autonomous needs a bit of tweaking to be more reliable and we need to work on making a better capper to cap easier. As well as to practice driving and capping as to not tip over the shipping hub.” For “What are potential things to tweak/add to robot?” the team responded with, “We would like to add cosmetics, tweak the autonomous code, try to make the arm longer or have a gripper extender to cap the control hub, and to look online for potential ideas for improvements.”
Saturday: Saturday was the team's 30th meet and they spent it at home over HopIn. The members of both teams woke up bright and early to join separate pit visit meetings. Two judges joined each pit meeting and asked questions to both teams. When that was finished, the teams had reflection time and set goals for the next two weeks. The awards ceremony was at 5 PM. The Automated Alternates (15680) took home the Judges' Choice Award, which recognizes a team for their outstanding efforts. The Automated Admiralty (9581) took home the Motivate Award 3rd Place, which recognizes a team that makes a collective effort to make FIRST known throughout their school and community. The Automated Admiralty (9581) came in 5th place with 630 points, only 30 points behind the 4th place team who advanced. The Automated Alternates (10580) came in 9th place with 462 points.
