Build Season Week 6-7

Chicken Bot Pie has finally gotten a chance to test our robot in real world conditions and we are
very pleased with the results! This past Saturday we attended the Week 0 event at Irondale
High School, and drove our robot in game conditions on a full size field.

Weeks 6 and 7 were the lead up to the Week 0 event, and it was important to have extra shop
time to make sure our robot was performing at its peak. Chicken Bot Pie would like to thank our
coaches for arranging for extra meetings and extra hours during this crunch time, and both our
coaches and mentors for being there during those extra meetings!

Build Team

The Build Team used Weeks 6 and 7 to test and evaluate the various physical subsystems and
determine areas for improvements, especially the intake, indexer, and ring shooter.
Where there were improvements we could make, Build re-manufactured or adjusted subsystem
components to make for a smoother robot. By the last few days before Week 0, the intake, ring
shooter, and climber were working very well.

As we mentioned last week, we feel we are further along in the process than we have been in recent years, so the team was optimistic heading into on-field testing during the Week 0 meet. One of the goals of the Build Team this year was to improve the reliability of the robot’s mechanical subsystems,
and this additional time to work during Weeks 6 and 7 allowed Build to fine tune the tolerances and reliability of the robot. We are very proud of the innovations in and manufacturing quality of our robot.

Programming

In Weeks 6 and 7, the Programming Team continued to build on their progress in Week 5.
One of Programming’s major accomplishments was wiring up the three intake subsystems and
climber. Also, with the timely delivery of smoothly operating intake, shooter, and climber,
Programming was excited to have the opportunity to fine tune its code for running those
systems

In addition, to prepare for the Week 0 event, Programming was also able to dial in the robot’s
autonomous routine, which is activated in the first 15 seconds of the game when humans are
not allowed to control the robot. The Programming Team set high goals for “Auto” and delivered! They were able to code several routines that not only score the ring loaded in the robot at the start of
the match, but also autonomously retrieve another ring and score the second ring as well. Furthermore, Programming’s work on vision systems was also showing great progress toward our goals of making use of our four onboard cameras to detect and use AprilTags (QR code-like designs placed
around the field) to identify and track the robot’s 2D position on the field.

Week 0 Results

Generally, we are very pleased with how the robot performed at Week 0. Our robot is able to pick up pieces from the ground nicely, the indexer (transfer system to shooter) works as designed, and the shooter is consistently putting the rings into the goal (the speaker). The climbing system also worked well, and the robot was able to lift itself up on the chains in around two seconds. In the spirit of Coopertition, we did not run our autonomous program in our early runs at Week 0 so other teams could test theirs on a full field, but in the last run the autonomous program executed a two-piece auto!

During the last few days leading up to our first tournament, we have a few areas where we would like to improve. The team is going to see if we can improve our power management to ensure that our power usage so we can reduce the drain on our battery. Programming will be working on even more advanced autonomous routines, driver assistance features, and vision processing. And most importantly, our drive team and human players will continue to practice.

Northern Lights Regional

This week, from Thursday to Saturday, we will be at the Northern Lights Regional competition.
This is our first competition that counts. We invite you to come support us in Duluth (at the
Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center) or follow our progress on The Blue Alliance.

Chicken Bot Pie would like to thank you for your support and encouragement. Without you, all of this would not be possible.

Thank you!!
Sincerely,
Milan Darji, Operations Captain
Celeste Hill, Head Coach
Minnetonka Robotics / Team 3082 / Chicken Bot Pie