Week 1 of build season has come to a close and 2655 has been hard at work prototyping and strategizing. The first few days of week 1 are usually the craziest of the season, with the exception of the final days of build. It's one of the most exciting times of build season as the community begins dreaming up strategies and finding ways to break the game.
As a mentor I primarily help out with strategy and scouting development for the team. We come up with the requirements that our scouting app will need this year and what kinds of metrics we want to track on other teams to make the best decisions we can on how to play a match. We are only two students and a mentor, but I've seen events where scouting was the game changer for match outcome. Our two scout/strategy students focus on learning the rules forwards and backwards including penalties for each illegal action, finding intricacies of the rules that affect gameplay and alliance selection, and of course we monitor Chief Delphi (a popular forum where many students across the program and across the world discuss strategy and seek technical help from other teams). We led the discussion for build priority and plan to focus this week on getting to know the data analysis tool we will be using to dive into the data we collect at competition. (I LOVE statistics! I can't wait to show the kids just how powerful data visualizations can be!)
I sat down with the team president and Mechanical Department Lead, Seth Brannan, to talk about his experience on the team and how he thinks we're doing so far. Seth is a senior on the team this year.
KC: How did you first get involved on the team?
SB: I was introduced to the team and FIST robotics by Ron Lamey, the owner of Blue Ridge Tool, He brought me to the team in 2011 and I have been here ever since.
KC: What has the team accomplished this week?
SB: Our team has made incredible leaps in the design process, and by the end of Saturday we had almost all of our major systems drawn in CAD. Our mechanical team has assembled the frame of our robot and is working on prototypes for the other systems we need this year.
KC: How do you feel about the progress this week?
SB: I think we are on track to have a finished robot by the end of week 5. We definitely have time to focus on some of the smaller details of the robot this year.
KC: What is your favorite part about being on the team?
SB: I love working out different problems and questions that come up when building a robot. The problem solving skills I have gained from the team have made a huge difference in my life already.
KC: What is Mechanical aiming to have completed by the end of week 2?
SB: We should have two driving bases assembled and ready for the programmers to start coding with. We also hope to start working on building the major systems for this year's game.
KC: What challenge did the team overcome this week?
SB: I think a big challenge our team tackled from a mechanical/design standpoint was creating a concept design that would fit all of our components within the allotted space.
<As a background to this answer, this year robots are confined to one of two volumes they can occupy, so all components and mechanisms must fit inside the volume, both when stored and when in use. It's a rule FRC hasn't seen in a long time.>
Outside of the normal build season activities, a few of the students also volunteered at the FIRST Lego League North Carolina State Championship this past weekend as referees. We also showed off last year's robot at the awards ceremony! Stay tuned next week!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This blog post is part of a series about the 2017 FIRST Robotics Competition season, FIRST Steamworks. We'll have weekly updates during build season from ADI FRC Team 2665 Flying Platypi, and updates from many of our ADI teams performances during the competition season. Stay tuned until the end for coverage of BOTH Championships in Houston, TX and St. Louis, MO in April!
