The first week of the new FRC season has been a bustling commotion of new ideas and planning. The subteams have been hard at work, arranging for the events to come.
Design started off the week by getting a solid idea of the robot's look through multiple brainstorming and strategy meetings. From there, they have branched off into smaller groups to work on separate subsystems and have made a LOT of progress. They have been working away, evaluating different features of the robot, and modifying them for the best performance. Now, it is time to get into the nitty gritty of week two, flesh out their designs, and make sure every square inch of the robot is spot on.
In week one, Fabrication has focused on prototyping and field elements. They have made a gripper claw prototype and done some testing with it. Testing showed the need to make some changes to the design, but overall, it seemed to work well. For field elements, they started with the charge station, and finished building it according to the design. They plan to make some changes to better fit our needs as we test and use it.
Programming has finished writing and testing code for the Swerve drive. They have also tested an autonomous path for the Swerve drive and are working on the autonomous routes for competition. The programmers were split up into groups for each subsystem. They have been working with the Design team to write code for their respective subsystems. Additionally, brainstorming for the mobile game app has been underway, and development will start next week.
Electrical has spent this week contributing to the discussion on strategy and robot design, adding their input on how to wire the robot most effectively. They worked with Design extensively throughout the meetings to allocate proper space for electrical components on the robot. This ensures that important components are well arranged and accessible. Additionally, they mounted a new gyro sensor, the Pigeon, onto the Swerve drive. This will help the drivers and programmers practice and test code. They switched to this sensor from the NavX as it provides more accurate data and is better supported within the FRC community.
The Business team has been working productively to organize and complete upcoming tasks and activities. Designing new team and CHARGED UP themed merchandise, the Impact Award executive summaries and essay, and keeping up with media at team events have been the primary tasks of the team during this first week.
The Strategy team has started this season by brainstorming and finalizing the makeup of the robot and our team’s priority of scoring objectives. They have also created a robot requirements list to help out the other sub-teams while building the robot, started brainstorming offensive and defensive gameplay strategies, and discussed scouting for upcoming competitions.
Lastly, the safety subteam has begun brainstorming ideas to improve the overall safety of the team.
