League Meet 3 SWOT Analysis

By Elm, Anda, David, Fernando, Pavit, Nirjha, and Nalin

Following League Meet Three, we conducted our comprehensive SWOT analysis to evaluate progress from Meet Two and identify our next steps forward. This analysis reveals both significant improvements and persistent challenges that will shape our strategy heading into the league tournament.

Strengths:

Enhanced Intake Efficiency: The addition of the right wing has greatly improved our intake performance. Artifacts now enter the robot quicker which helps us lead to much quicker cycle times than last meet.

Dual-Motor Flywheel: Adding the second motor to our flywheel has also greatly helped with efficiency. The flywheel now reaches target velocity significantly faster, addressing one of the biggest bottlenecks from the previous meet. This enhancement shortened our spin-up time and improved our overall cycle time.

Drive Team Communication: The coordination between the drive coach, human-player, and driver has become much stronger and effective. This allowed us to park during endgame more frequently than last time and also led to no human-player artifact fouls like last meet.

Weaknesses:

Left Wing: The left wing part of our intake system has become a significant liability. When artifacts contact the left wing, they simultaneously hit the conveyor belt on the side, meaning they don't actually get intaked into the robot. This design conflict undermines the intake efficiency we gained with the right wing. Also, when the human player feeds artifacts through the left side, they travel sideways and risk exiting the loading zone, which results in a foul.

Electrical and Mechanical Issues: During the meet, we experienced significant static due to a lack of ground wires. This caused a lot of disconnects during the middle of the matches, which greatly slowed us down. The paddle can extend too far downward causing the nylon to flex too much, and this has also scratched the bot. The servo controlling our Limelight is mounted incorrectly too.

Inconsistent Flywheel Velocity: While our first shot maintains good accuracy, the flywheel progressively loses speed with each successive shot. This pattern suggests our power delivery algorithm is not maintaining consistent velocity for all three shots, causing the 2nd and 3rd shots to not go far enough.

Strategic Inefficiencies: Aligning for parking takes almost all of endgame, reducing our available scoring time. We are also not optimizing our approach for purple artifacts, leaving potential pattern points on the table.

Opportunities:

Electrical and Hardware Improvements: Installing a proper grounding wire should eliminate our static electricity problems, improving reliability and potentially resolving intermittent control issues. We have new flywheel components on order that could further improve performance, though shipping delays mean we'll need to be patient. Our testing confirmed that we need the silicon tape for proper compression, allowing us to focus optimization efforts elsewhere.

Flywheel Velocity Equation Refinement: We need to rework our distance calculations to determine optimal flywheel velocities with more extensive trials. With the second motor now integrated, our original equation from Meet Two no longer applies. Conducting thorough testing with the dual-motor configuration will allow us to develop a more accurate velocity model that accounts for the changed dynamics.

Mechanical Redesign: Removing the flaps from the left wing while keeping the structure to open the gate could resolve the simultaneous contact issue. Updating the paddle mechanism to work effectively with our two-motor flywheel could enable truly continuous three-artifact shooting, or we could revisit the curved ramp concept from our Meet Two opportunities to eliminate the paddle's over-extension issues while improving artifact feeding consistency.

Driver Practice: Dedicating practice time to complete game scenarios rather than isolated drills will help us optimize our match strategy, improve transitions between game phases, and develop better instincts for time management.

> Threats:

Contested Territory in Apex of Launch Zone: When we position to shoot from the apex region, we face aggressive defensive pressure and frequently get shoved off position. Our lightweight, compact design makes us vulnerable to these disruptions, and our Limelight servo issues prevent automatic repositioning from working reliably.

Advanced Auton Competition: Other teams are demonstrating 12-artifact autonomous routines that dramatically exceed our current 2-3 artifact capability. This autonomous scoring gap directly impacts ranking points and puts us at a significant disadvantage from the opening seconds of each match.

The analysis reveals that while we've made meaningful progress in some areas since Meet Two, particularly with flywheel acceleration and intake efficiency on the right side, we've also uncovered new challenges that require immediate attention. We will use what we learned through our SWOT to hopefully make great strides and be at a better position for the League Tournament.