League Meet 1 Review

By Anuhya, Vance, Sol, Georgia, Krish, Tanvi, Jai, and Aarav

Task: Review our performance at our first league meet!

Today was our first league meet, which means all our wins, losses, overall points and points gained in autonomous would count towards league tournament rankings. This was a good opportunity to see how we'd hold up against other robotics teams who all had the same amount of time to prepare for this season's game. Overall, it was a good experience and we were pleasantly surprised by our robot's capabilities as well as our luck!

Play by Play

Match 1: 26 to 10 Win

Our auton actually worked! Our robot's auton is designed to move the robot back slightly and deposit a pixel onto the middle randomization line. We scored 20 points for auton! The beater bar was slow to start, so we were at a bit of a disadvantage of our own creation, and the linear slide servo wire came out, meaning we had to rely on the beater bar for depositing our pixels. We ended up with one pixel backstage, and we parked during the end game but we were almost outside the field.

Match 2: 20 to 26 Loss

Our robot moved in auton but the beater bar didn't release the pixel. This was similar to an issue we were having at the scrimmage, where the beater bar wasn't able to get a good hold on the pixels. We scored one pixel using the beater bar but one issue we noticed was that the beater bar was getting stuck on the tape which demarcates the wings. This can be both problematic for our game because it can give the opposite team penalties and it also takes away from our ability to get pixels from the wings. We parked in end game. Some possible solutions we may look at to help with the tape issue is curving the edge of the tray of the beater bar or adding some frictionless tape so it doesn't catch as much.

Match 3: 15 to 39 Loss

Our robot, once again, moved in auton but didn't release the pixel. Immediately after auton, our robot's battery died so we couldn't move it at all. It was also a hindrance to our alliance team because it died right in front of the backdrop. We got some points from a penalty, but it was still a resounding loss. In many of our previous robotics' seasons, our robots' dying has been a major issue. As a team, we need to do a better job of ensuring that we have charged batteries available and the voltages are at the optimal amount for a fully functional robot.

Match 4: 14 to 28 Win

Our auton deployed properly but luck was not on our side; the pixel placement didn't match randomization. We scored 4 pixels on the backdrop, picking up the pixels from the wings and using our linear slide and scoopagon to score on the backdrop, but they didn't form a mosaic. In end game, both of the robots on our alliance parked!

Match 5: 54 to 60 Win

Our auton deployed properly and the pixel fell on the randomization line! Our alliance partners parked during the autonomous period as well. We scored five pixels on the backdrop but two of them got knocked off. During end game, both our alliance teams got parking! Pixels getting knocked off the backdrop are a recurring issue throughout our matches this season. We need more driver practice to make sure the scoopagon hits the backdrop with the correct amount of force to deploy the pixels but also doesn't knock off any pixels already on the backdrop. We also need a strategy to make mosaics instead of placing random pixels on the backdrop because mosaics get far more points.

Next Steps

Our outtake is still not as reliable as it could have been, especially because of the wire management and how wobbly our linear slide is overall. We have made clear progress from our scrimmage, where the outtake didn't work at all, to now, where the outtake works but isn't reliable, but there is still a lot more work to do. We've seen that our “scoopagon” is quite reliable and don't have any plans to change it at this moment, other than to secure our counterweight in a better way. We also know that using the vision pipeline is very possible for our autonomous and we want to implement that by the next league meet. We are also going to experiment with different materials for the tray of the beater bar, with it currently being a very thin sheet of aluminum.