Drive Practice
Today was our first earnest day of drive practice, and week 6 starts tomorrow. Yikes.
Prior to the meeting, Taye reversed the problematic pulleys in the intake. It now runs slow enough to pick up game pieces reliably, but too slow to pick up game pieces with the robot at full speed. The Markforged print was made with a 1/2" hex bore, but it turns out the shaft is 3/8" round. We quickly printed and installed a PLA pulley instead.
The goal of today's practice session was to get good at positioning and scoring. The original plan was to run batches of 6 cones, 6 cubes, and then get in position for a climb. We decided against playing with cones today, and were running cube-only cycles. This is the log sheet for the day.
Prior to the meeting, Taye reversed the problematic pulleys in the intake. It now runs slow enough to pick up game pieces reliably, but too slow to pick up game pieces with the robot at full speed. The Markforged print was made with a 1/2" hex bore, but it turns out the shaft is 3/8" round. We quickly printed and installed a PLA pulley instead.
The goal of today's practice session was to get good at positioning and scoring. The original plan was to run batches of 6 cones, 6 cubes, and then get in position for a climb. We decided against playing with cones today, and were running cube-only cycles. This is the log sheet for the day.
Here are some videos from today's session.
It has been a long time since 1678 was this far away from having a competitive machine at this point in build season. Looking at last season's practice results, we ran 134 cycles on February 12th, 2022. Today we ran 31, with 6 of our 9 practice runs ending in mechanical failure. We're all nervous about our competitive prospects right now, but it's important to remember that all of the subsystems giving us problems already have improvements in place for comp.
The silver lining on today is that we're finally driving and finally learning our failure modes. The lingering question is whether we can keep failing and recovering fast enough to succeed in 20 days when we load-in to Port Hueneme.
The silver lining on today is that we're finally driving and finally learning our failure modes. The lingering question is whether we can keep failing and recovering fast enough to succeed in 20 days when we load-in to Port Hueneme.