D&U League Tournament Post Mortem

Tags: control and innovate
Personhours: 18
D&U League Tournament Post Mortem By Anuhya, Georgia, Gabriel, Trey, Vance, Leo, and Aarav

Task: Discuss the events of our first tournament of the season

Team 6832, Iron Reign, and our sister teams, Iron Core and Iron Giant had our first tournament to qualify for Regionals or Semi Regionals. Overall, it was an incredible learning experience for our newer members. This was our first opportunity this year to talk to judges and leave a lasting impression with our presentation skills and our robot.

Strengths:

  • The speed and success with which we replaced the gripper
  • We won Inspire and 2nd place Think so our portfolio was definitely well constructed
  • We did a good job of selling the team's story, its role in the larger ftc community, and how tau is the pinnacle of that story

Weaknesses:

  • Less emphasis on outreach
  • Distance sensor detected wire, messed with underarm
  • Need new place to mount power switch to make room for underarm
  • Coordinating with alliance partners
    • Collisions were avoidable, high scores more achievable
    • Have to get better at concisely explaining strategy, maybe with a short video
  • Drive Practice: Not enough, excusable since it was a new robot, but not going forward
    • Time to train with multiple drivers for scoring patterns

Opportunities:

  • UnderArm
  • New Crane which can extend farther
  • A more versatile gripper: Flipper Gripper
  • Prioritize presentation for proper emphasis
  • Mechavator reveal video
  • Taubot Reveal Video
  • Subsystems video
    • Linear slide video
  • STEM Expo
  • Better cable management
  • Reliable UnderArm distance measurement - need ideas
    • Odometry wheels on linear slides
    • Encoder on a spring-powered retractable string (like the ones you would use for an id badge)
    • Tape measure with sensor to read numbers
  • Using sensors for autonomous period and tele-op

Threats:

  • Robot capability
    • Release the Flipper Gripper - we need to see the dynamics in action, it might not be viable
    • Flipper gripper damping - we need to try different friction materials
    • Bulb gripper wrist - we may need to do active wrist control, which needs to be figured out asap
    • Flipper Gripper elbow - we may need to do active elbow control, which needs to be figured out asap
    • New Crane/Shoulder/Turret - need to avvelerate the build
    • Crane bouncing needs to be fixed on the new system
    • New Crane wiring harness with distance sensor and 3 servos - can't wait for full custom board manufacturing - need prototype
    • New IMU for new Crane (ordered)
    • Nudge stick distance sensor - will it work over the ultra long cable?
    • UnderArm
      • Mount onto robot and get unfold and articulations right
      • Anti-collision code with Crane
      • Better distance sensing and control for chariot extension
      • May need wrist control for conestacks
    • Lasso gripper needs to be tested, might not be viable
      • Make an alternate gripper design for UnderArm, as a fail-over option
    • Sensors
      • Cone and Cone Stack detector
      • Junction pole detector
      • Differential Distance Sensor as alternative to vision
      • Team number labels if LED Panels get rejected
      • Huge amount of drive practice needed
  • Team Composition - will onboarding new members at this time cause confusion and harm productivity?
  • Teams
    • Technic Bots
    • Mark X
    • Technical Difficulties
  • New sponsors and connect opportunities
  • Prep
    • Poor battery planning
      • Missing a multimeter
      • LED panel batteries not charged
      • Batteries not properly labeled
      • LED Switch and battery not properly secure
      • Batteries need to be tested for internal resistance
    • Rank what would be best to talk about, so talk about what benefits our stationary robot
  • Judging
    • Didn't have powerpoint up for initial judge motivate
    • More practice/preparation beforehand
    • Lack of presentation practice and timing(couldn't finish connect and motivate)
    • Don't oversaturate with information/gloss over other parts
    • Lack of people ready for judging panels
    • Lack of enthusiasm
    • Need Cart with display ready to go
    • Practice entering the room with the robot running
    • Practice in-judging Demo
    • Whenever we mention a specific part of subsystem, let judges interact with it
  • Inspection
    • Capstones were too close to being out of sizing - reprint
    • Robot close to out of sizing (Inspector was young, careless, and did not thoroughly check sizing)
    • Missing power switch label and full initialization label (they let us replace it, it was fine)

Date | January 29, 2023