Forester Field House Robotics Competition

By Janavi, Omar, Tycho, Max, Jayesh, Evan, Lin, and Darshan

Task: Compete in the Forester Field House Robotics Competition

We started off with our presentation pretty early, and everything was going pretty well until our robot had a static issue, and stopped working. We were able to cover it up pretty well without the judges noticing. One of the judges seemed to like our rap, and was interested in seeing the R.V. Our presentation ran a little long and cut into our question asking time. But other than that the presentation went pretty well. As for scouting, Evan and Omar went around and talked to all the teams, we even created flyers them to pass out the all the teams.

We created a common excel sheet that we all shared on the google drive so everyone could scout when they got time. This time we actually put on shields in advance, and they weren’t made of duct tape! But we also had to replace the core power distribution module. And to do that we had to take off the shields. This resulted in us scrambling at the last minute to reattach the shields while rolling the robot over to the field. We replaced the CPDM because in the past it has been constantly resetting, and seems to have a faulty U.S.B connection. Replacing the CPDM as well as spraying staticide in between match really helped to improve our reliability during the matches. This resulted in us winning the rest of the matches. We ended up in 5th place. During the Alliance Selection we were the first pick of the first alliance captain. During the semifinals around 9 beacons had stopped working and the judges had resorted to holding up spoons with flags when the beacon button was pushed. In the end our alliance won and we also got the second place inspire award. This meant that if we hadn’t advanced already we would have had advanced during this completion.

Reflections

All in all we’re pretty happy with the results of this competition, our robot was more reliable than it usually is and we were able to completely stress test it. We believe the improved reliability was the result of replacing our CPDM and the improved side shields. We may have damaged our previous one simply through electrostatic discharge, ironically making us more susceptable to ESD in our other matches. Decreasing the conductive materials on the outside by properly blocking them with shields will make us more reliable in the future. Next time we need to make a complete check list so we don't forget the import things, like staticide.