Team 1261

Tanner wrote:How much progress did Logan's chassis get? Last I saw it had chains and all wheels, which probably means driving tomorrow (yay).

[though that means wiring completely up the other cRIO, which was taken apart - not sure why]

-Tanner

I believe one side is completely chained, and the other side has 50% of the chain on it. Which means just mounting the gearbox and chaining the output sprockets of the gearbox with the wheels. Which as a whole shouldn't take too long.

Ultimately I want to see Logan's robot power over the bump, and if we can do that tomorrow, then that'll be the stuff. Tanner, I love ur chassis and how well it climbs the bump, but TBH, its landings are a little rough and if we can get something nicer/smoother, then I think it'd be awesome.

If we can get Logan's chassis done tomorrow, or the latest by Tuesday, then I think we can make a final chassis decision this week. I don't think we need to mount a "separate" kicker onto logan's chassis because the beauty of the kicker is that it can be molded onto both designs, and the kicker won't be different on either chassis.

My goal is to get the Logan chassis operational on Sunday. We need to help in finish chaining the one side, mount gearboxes and a separate team building the etronics. We have to get this done.

Sunny wrote:I believe one side is completely chained, and the other side has 50% of the chain on it. Which means just mounting the gearbox and chaining the output sprockets of the gearbox with the wheels. Which as a whole shouldn't take too long.

Sweet. YAY - driving robots.

Sunny wrote:Ultimately I want to see Logan's robot power over the bump, and if we can do that tomorrow, then that'll be the stuff. Tanner, I love ur chassis and how well it climbs the bump, but TBH, its landings are a little rough and if we can get something nicer/smoother, then I think it'd be awesome.

Yeah, but I think the loudness of it hitting the ground is the main portion (at least that is what it is for me). But yeah it is kinda rougher than I imagine it could be. It won't be a smooth ride either way (at least I don't think it will be), but it could be smoother. It'll be interesting to see how his reacts to the onslaught of gravity.

Thinking of how we could fix mine (if it so becomes that way), we could always attach a accelerometer on it and sense when we're going down a bump. Then we could slow the motors down a bit, so that it's not so much doing a "dukes of hazard" flight off the bump, but a situation in where gravity still holds it to the bump. I'm not sure how much we'd have to affect the motor speed, but it'd be interesting.

Sunny wrote:If we can get Logan's chassis done tomorrow, or the latest by Tuesday, then I think we can make a final chassis decision this week. I don't think we need to mount a "separate" kicker onto logan's chassis because the beauty of the kicker is that it can be molded onto both designs, and the kicker won't be different on either chassis.

Agreed. I do like how modular the kicker is - 'tis quite nice. Good work.

-Tanner

Logan's chassis just needs 2-3 people working on. All we need is to mount the toughbox to drivetrain chain on both sides. This is best just done by Patrick and Logan. Once that is done, we connect the electronics package and ready to go.

I think we learned today that traversing the 'bump' is not a pleasant experience. The T-chassis had very bent rear axles. The Tank chassis was taking some hard hits as well.

I am not sure a strategy of traversing the bump is an ultimate strategy.

We need to focus on kicking, blocking, and being able to turn efficiently.

Hanging for what two points --- I am not sure. What if there are balls to be kicked into your zone during the time spent trying to hang? Only a robot located in the center field can grab the tower. All a defensive bot has to do is hang out in front of the tower and that strategy is over.

freds wrote:I think we learned today that traversing the 'bump' is not a pleasant experience. The T-chassis had very bent rear axles. The Tank chassis was taking some hard hits as well.

I am not sure a strategy of traversing the bump is an ultimate strategy.

We need to focus on kicking, blocking, and being able to turn efficiently.

Hanging for what two points --- I am not sure. What if there are balls to be kicked into your zone during the time spent trying to hang? Only a robot located in the center field can grab the tower. All a defensive bot has to do is hang out in front of the tower and that strategy is over.

The thoughts above carry decent merit, and probably need to be decided upon.

While I'm not convinced that traversing the bump will be "essential", I think it's a good skill to have. In the 5th gear simulator, I find myself cross the bump only once or twice during the entire match, and that's only with one on one.

The L-chassis has some trouble, but I'm kinda sure that with 120 pounds, it'll go over better because it'll have more friction. Also, the motors are veering, which is causing it to go up the bump sideways, that might be something we wanna fix. On Saturday, we can mount the battery lower, and maybe add some dead weight to simulate the 120 pounds that the robot will eventually support. This process shouldn't take more than 15-30 minutes, but none the less, I think we should make a final chassis decision on Saturday.

Just looking at what teams are rolling out, it appears to me that *maybe* hanging is not as big as we initially thought it would be. And this is something we need to figure out. If we want to try to hang, then we need to start playing around with the options this Saturday. It's easy enough to pull ourselves up, but getting the hook up there is presenting some issues. If we choose not to hang, then the extra CIM that we've been saving can be better focused to the kicker. (Maybe even have a CIM powered kicker, I've seen them have decent success)


Also, food for more thought. It seems that teams are having success with dropped middle wheels. If we maybe take Tanner's chassis and add a center wheel that is slightly dropped, we can greatly better turning as well as maybe smoothing the bump dismount.

Just somethings I'm constantly thinking about, and I think that we need to address as soon as possible.

- Sunny

I think going over the bumps is essential even if it is only used a few times per match. The available maneuverability I think is a very good pro.

I'm not sure how to "fix" Logan's robot, but starting with playing with the CoG is a good start if the only start.

I never really thought climbing was important, but that depends what happens with the drivetrains possibly.

I think adding a center wheel onto my robot would make it highly unstable depending on how much difference there is between the wheels.

-Tanner

I think that ideally, we might be going over the bump once per game. 2 robots aren't allowed at the same time on the goal side of the field, and defense is de-emphasized by the seeding point system, so we won't want to be at our opponent's goal area. Ideally, one bot is in the scoring area and two are in the middle to channel incoming balls to the scoring area. Its probably not advantageous to be going all over the field and traversing the bumps except for once early in the match. So as long as we can make it over the bump consistently, we can probably survive the roughness of tanner's chassis over the bump without compromising our robot's structural integrity in the long run too much. (I'm not saying that we cant improve it though.)

You are probably right on the once per game, unless we decide to go for the lifting at the end.