League Meet 1 Post-Mortem

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

Task: Analyze our performance at our 1st League Meet

After Meet 1, Iron Reign met to discuss their performance as a team and make plans for the next month in preparation for Meet 2. Here are our takeaways and analysis, divided into strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities.

Strengths:

• Our drive team communicated quite well, and we could score pixels very well and turn those points into match wins.
• A better auton performance than we expected. We only coded it for the middle region, but it consistently scored that. However, we were lucky with the region selection during this meet. Adding code for the two side zones is near the top of our to-do list right now.
• No hang-ups on the stage door while crossing the playing field. Our strategy this year involves building a robot shorter than the stage door so that we can freely transit across the center rigging, and during this meet, our robot was quite successful at that task.

Weaknesses:

• A mediocre gameplay robot that does not stand out innovation-wise. Generally speaking, this year's robot will not be super innovative compared to the previous year's robot. This means that we need to put effort into improving the gameplay capabilities of the robot to stand out.
• The outtake got stuck and missed the pickup location. Because of the tight spacing near the transfer point, our outtake would get stuck on wires and bungees around there and not reach all the way down, leading to failed transfers.
• Wire management limited our usage of the outtake. Often, when we extended the outtake, the wire connecting the servo at the end would get caught on the chassis and unplug, rendering us unable to score. We need to cable manage the entire robot and test to ensure nothing gets caught when the robot moves.
• Intake catching on tape/tiles. When we were picking up the robot on the wings, the front edge of the beater bar would get caught in the tape and not pick up the pixels. That is something we will have to experiment with and fix.
• Erratic movement and a lack of control sometimes led to us hitting the backdrop and descoring pixels. A better understanding of our scoring positions and outtake positions should help us avoid this.

Threats:

• Lack of organization. So far during the season, we have not communicated well between subteams and as a team in general. We must ensure everyone is on the same page and up-to-date on what is happening, especially across subteams.
• Careless placement of expensive parts. We often misplace motors and servos, and these costs increase over time. This ties into being more organized, both in our workspace and as a team.
• Only working on the robot at the Robodojo(not emphasizing design and portfolio). Editorial work, CAD, and code(to an extent) can be done off-site, and our ability to stay on schedule relies on us putting time outside our formal meetings.
• We have not thought about what we want our portfolio to look like or put much effort into our documentation efforts.
• We simply have not put much effort into finding and getting donations/sponsorships. We must focus on that to continue the program's sustainability and fund the parts we need for the new robot.

Opportunities and Next Steps:

• Seeking out mentorship and connect opportunities. Building relationships for the long-term. For example, we could have more meetings with DPRG.
• A new chassis for the next robot version with a potential 3-wheel drive.
• We have yet to tackle the lift or drone aspect. Getting designs underway for those and testing them on the robot to increase our point-scoring capability.
• We could experiment with a shortened linear slide and Scoopagon to solve some of our problems with a reliable transfer system. Also, adding a way for the robot to detect the backdrop for depositing pixels should allow us to automate the process and reduce our chance of descoring pixels.
• Expanding auton to all 3 regions and adding the yellow pixel
• Blending innovation and gameplay strength for future competitions
• More driver practice, which is something we have neglected in past seasons.