Day #30: Driver Practice and Field Teardown
Field Teardown
Today, students helped to tear down the team-built game elements on the field in anticipation of the arrival of official game elements. The high goal, pyramid, its top goal, the feeder station, and all prototypes (shooter, intake, indexer, conveyor) were taken apart. The wood has been taken to the outside shed area, and the metal and other pieces have been stored away. In addition, the field was cleaned and vacuumed, and the robots on the field were moved to one corner to allow for sufficient space for the driver to practice.
Meanwhile, students also removed vital electronics from the 2010 robot. The team helped remove its power distribution board, digital sidecar, spike relay, and compressor to store for (possible) future use. PWM wires, encoder wires, and miscellaneous screws and nuts were returned to their appropriate bin.
Driver Practice
The team’s primary driver, Abhi Kumar, practiced driving around on the field. A circle was made on the field with tape for the driver to practice driving in circles. In addition, three frisbees were placed on the field as obstacles to practice driving around. The 2013 practice robot was used to drive around the field. For more security and safety, students attached pool noodles to the four sides of the robot to prevent scratches and damage in the case of collisions.
Manufacturing
The team also continued manfacturing parts on the lathe and the mill. Students made two different kinds of spacers for the gearbox using the lathe. Additionally, the front roller tubes for the intake were manufactured on the lathe. The students plan to have these two tasks finished tonight.
Meanwhile, other students used the mill to create “pockets” in the wooden bumper frames. These indents in the wood would later be used to attach the metal hinges.
Milling pockets in the bumper wood
The bumper frame wood and the CAD drawing
Programming
The programmers worked on implementing the shooter loader solenoid in the Shooter subsystem class. They also got the code for the 2013 robot ready for driver practice. They found that the deadband for the right joystick’s x-axis was too high (0.1). Also, there seems to be some odd and jumpy turning behaviors, which the programmers believe is caused by the cheesy drive command. The current deadband simply ignores joystick input if its value is less than the deadband value, so there is a jump in power when the joystick is moved above the threshold. Ideally, the programmers want to modify the drive code so that the power builds up after the joystick has been moved past the deadband.
Tomorrow, the programmers will investigate these problems in greater detail.
Action Items
- Investigate problems in cheesy drive code
- Continue driver practice
- Continue bumper assembly and manufacturing
