UME Prep Qualifier Cumulative Post-Mortem

By Jose, Bhanaviya, Anisha, Mahesh, Karina, Cooper, Justin, Paul, and Trey

Task: Analyze what went wrong at the UME Prep Qualifier

It has officially been one week since the UME Prep Qualifier and we are now 4 weeks away from the Regional Championship. This is not great but it does mean one thing - a post-mortem talk! A post-mortem talk allows us to analyze our performance in full detail and take a closer look at our strengths, weaknesses, potential opportunities and threats in a cumulative SWOT analysis. The analysis itself is detailed by each of our subteams and on our performance throughout the day, and in our preparation efforts. You can see the analysis down below:

PREPARATION

Strengths

• Earlier preparation of the engineering journal
• Turret needs a better history - in an earlier post?
• Driver practice
• Robot Demo
• Content was organized well
• Functional (semi) robot
• Judging Box - more cohesive

Weaknesses

• Disaster zone that is a flurry of parts and tools who knows where
• Pit needs to be better organized
• N A T U R E
• There weren't very many match videos that were taken
• Packing List
• Need a rack for bags
• Resizing images
• A lack of people staying late on Friday
• Presentation
• Last minute preparation the day of (logistics)
• Lack of Autonomous
• Gripper mounted too late
• Not enough people for load out
• Control Award
• Karina and Ben did all the packing the day of

Opportunities

• Afterschool & Sunday Practices
• Allocating more time to preparation in the weeks before competition instead of days
• Tent, banners, business cards (for handouts)
• Post-event follow through: plugging in phones, charging batteries, etc
• Research posters
• Control map needs more hype

Threats

• Laziness
• Busy schedules/low priority

JUDGING

Strengths

• We won Think 1st place!
• Nominated for all awards except Motivate
• Had a good explanation for robot shape (mentioned center of gravity, turn table)
• Find a better way to show outreach separation
• Transitions at slides
• Very good at redirecting
• Storytelling
• Pit visits:
• Good at getting queues from one another
• demo worked better than at presentation

Weaknesses

• Choices for content that doesn’t link to awards
• LACK ENERGY
• Don’t redirect to topics that don’t have a lot of substance
• Conclude better?
• Didn’t redirect
• More calculations based posts
• Document specific driver calculations
• Referring back to their questions
• Clarity about past achievement: We present a lot of information about outreach and prior accomplishments in our presentation but because of the sheer amount of information that we share, judges get the idea that our current team isn’t completely responsible.
• Hand off between presenters needs to be smoother
• Having our broom H A T S
• Having more people at the pits to rep team
• Did not seed questions
• Discussing our focus on sustainability effectively (MXP, etc)
• Needed people placed at pits to talk to judges

Opportunities

• Be aware of what a judge is looking for
• Emphasize that circle helps with strategy
• Make our binder stand out - create robot manual
• Create a table for our swivels - qualitative research with Nylon, Ninjaflex
• Polycarb?, Aluminum swivel, CNC-ed robot

Threats

• Not being able to communicate to judges effectively

ROBOT PERFORMANCE

Strengths

• Inspection passed the 1st time
• Advertised well to 1st seed
• Physical build was solid
• Focused on building/improving throughout competition
• Teamwork

Weaknesses

• Learn game strategy, learn to wave
• Less gripper wobble - fix dropper, improve placement
• Wire management
• Set screws

Opportunities

• Driver practice - allocate time and practice match play
• CNC Bot:
• - Create a base plan + turntable
• -Gripper less jank: the ninjaflex part could use nylon
• - Jiggle test?
• LEDS MAKE BOT LIT
• Joystick compensates for distance - being able to change heights for extend to tower height
• Gripper less jank - measure elasticity
• Slow down arm movement - precision mode
• Test grippers
• Collaborating with alliance
• Fully automatic gripper with distance sensors
• Completely CNCed robot (base - polycarb with aluminum sides)
• Articulations - More accurate presets specifically for elbow
• Dampen swing on gripper
• BoM with links

Threats

• High performing teams(I would have never known!)
• Time Management(ok…)
• Acquisition of all parts
• Enough time for modeling all the robot parts

SCOUTING & PIT ENGAGEMENT

Strengths

• Hand off between presenters needs to be smoother
• Having more people at the pits to rep team
• Did not seed questions
• Discussing our focus on sustainability effectively (MXP, etc)
• Enthusiasm
• Organizing pits (backpacks at pits - keep them in car)

Weaknesses

• Follow through on checking other teams claims is anecdotal, not systematic
• Did we get video of all of our matches?
• Having more people at the pits to rep team
• Did not seed questions
• Discussing our focus on sustainability effectively (MXP, etc)
• Organizing pits (backpacks at pits - keep them in car)

Opportunities

• Be aware of what a judge is looking for
• Make our binder stand out - create robot manual
• Design pit layout ahead of time (Ben and Paul responsible for this)
• Dress up our pit with tent and banners
• HAVE LAPTOP READY WITH IMPORTANT STUFF
• Center of Gravity for our hats
• Business cards - have robot
• 3D printed tiny robots?
• Detailed accounts for each match we do/play by play
• Watching other teams’ matches to see how good they are
• Take the chance to talk to other teams
• Scouting App

Threats

• Sitting around looking at phones looks like disengagement even if we are researching stuff
• Having one person REIGN during pit visits
• Lack of data - stats
• Dominant autonomous teams

Next Steps:

We will work to implement the opportunities mentioned as well as rectifying all of the aforementioned errors before regionals. As we get closer to regionals, we will have to update this list, but as of now, it serves as a to-do list for the next following weeks.