Freight Frenzy Meeting #34 - Tournament Debrief

 Meeting 34

DATE : 2/8/22

Agenda: SOAR League Debrief and Plan for State Championship

Attendees: Coach Cynde, Coach Grace, Sean Pakros, Jessica Hawkinson, Zeke Humber and Nate Humber, Skyler Firestone

Notes: We have 5 weeks to prepare for State Championship in Hillsboro!

The claw worked well and great driving by Zeke and Skyler. The scouting by Zeke, Nate and Jessica really paid off and helped us understand the best ways to work with each alliance. Autonomous Programming was successful every time. Our Judging was good but out of order, too quiet and nervous. We answered questions well. We scored our highest matches yet at 170, 177 and 238. We were ranked Second. First Winning Alliance Pick and we won the Connect Award! We progress to the State Championship!

We discussed how we can improve for State:

1. Presentation

    Add outreach numbers - The judges asked how we know we are reaching people and we need to give some quantitative answer.

    More presentation practice with live audience!

2. Technical Drawings - we need to show more of our CAD drawings in the Notebook and on the display boards

3. Our Notebook needs to include the math equations we did for the motors and any other calculations.

4. Programming - Notebook section, Page for Portfolio, Control Award, Road Runner

5. Display Board Improvement and Trifold for our table

6. More Sponsorship

7. More Outreach and Mentors, SWE Connection for Jessica?

8. The Robot - What Improvements?

   We talked about the possibility of changing to a roller intake like other teams had, but, it’s too much design and re-engineering work in 5 weeks. 

One of the biggest problems was being delayed from getting freight because of a larger robot blocking our path over the barriers. If we could fit around the barrier, we would be able to continue gathering freight for the alliance shipping hub regardless if the other larger robot. We would need to decrease our robot width 3/4”. It would mean cutting 2 of our GoBilda Beams to make them fit correctly. We discussed it and decided this was workable and would not have dire effects on the programming. Ed offered to work with Nate and Zeke to disassemble the center of the robot and trim the back channels before our next meeting.

    For weeks, we had discussed that a wrist for our claw would be helpful and make it more accurate to place blocks in the Shared Shipping Hub and to cap with our team element. Coach found a linear servo and we created a prototype of what we had been discussing by using a hinge and a pair of channel pieces.

    Sean also wants to try a hexagonal shape for the team element. We need to recut our plastic sides and reprint numbers and marker holders to glue onto them.

    We noticed that one of the wheels is not strafing and is pulling a bit to one side. Ed said the carriage might be off balance. We also have a lot of debris in the wheel gears from dirt on the mats. Jessica will bring a toothbrush to the next meeting so we can clean them.

We have a list of tasks and set a time line plan: 5 weeks total

2 weeks for any build changes

2 weeks to update our Presentation and start practicing

3 weeks for any programming changes and improvements

4 weeks for additional outreach, mentorship and sponsors

4 weeks to improve our display boards for presentation and create our trifold

4 weeks to improve our Portfolio and update our Notebook

4 weeks to improve the Team Element and reprint the details for our robot sides

4 weeks of Driver Practice