Week #1 FIRST Robotics Competition, 2016MegaHurtz Robotics (FRC 5056) was part of 40 teams that competed in the Kettering District #1 event held at Kettering University in Flint Michigan on March 4 and 5. This was our first of two events we will compete in this season. Load-In
Arriving at a new event location for the first time is always a little daunting. Where do we park? Where do we unload? Where do we go once inside the doors? Fortunately, Kettering University provided a entire building for the competition with their Recreation Center. On Thursday, we arrived approximately 4:00 PM. There were already several teams unloaded. We had no trouble backing up to the load-in doors and getting our robot and gear inside. The pits were small at Kettering so we were a bit cramped in an 8’ x 8’ pit area, but we made it work. As soon as the pit was setup, our first priority is to get the robot inspected. A robot inspector has to come by and unbag the robot. This is a process where they verify our lockup form, lockup tag number and give us the OK to cut the tag. Once the robot is opened we have time to get things ready for them to come back and begin the inspection. This year there is a two page inspection checklist to go through to ensure we followed all the rules and our robot is safe. This particular inspection was one of the longest we’ve done because there is just so much to go over with the bot. One of the last things to be inspected was the firmware versions of our radio that connects our bot to the field. A “week one” update was released (this information was not sent out to the teams so everyone was finding out about it at the event). Any releases that come out before we get a chance to test them scare me. Last season at Kentwood we had to do a firmware update and it broke our bot. We spent more time with our robot dead on the field than competing because their field and the update they applied didn’t work right. I did not want a repeat of that again this year so I was extremely frustrated to find out we had to update things. This frustration was not helped by the first attempt by the systems specialists at the event failed. That is to say that when they did the update the first time it didn’t work. The second time they did the update they forgot to configure our radio with our team number. On the third attempt it appeared everything was right and truth be told, we had no additional issues with our radio. After inspection is complete, our highest priority is to get connected to the field. The field is an independent computer systems that links the robot to our control system. It allows for control of the robot wirelessly. We have experienced first hand how a robot can work fine when we directly connect to it, but does absolutely nothing when connected through the field system. Our first match is not a good time to discover we have field issues so we made sure to get a practice match in to verify everything works with the field.
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While not quite as dramatic as the TV series, things are still rather intense around the workshop. As of today we have 24 days remaining in our build season. That is 24 days to finish designing, building, programming and testing our new robot. I have to say, though, things are coming along pretty good. The build team spent the day getting the chassis finalized and the track system tested. We were able to drive the bot today! (video of that in our next post) We learned a lot from our test drive. We have some track adjustments and support problems that will need to be worked out. A major part of today was also spent working on the boulder pickup system and shooting system. A group of our newest team members worked on our multi-function arm as well. We prototyped a couple of great ideas and put together a shopping list. Once the parts are in, we'll be able to assemble the arm and do some more tests. The biggest issue with the new arm mechanics will be limiting movement. Our plan is to do with with a combination of physical restrictions, limit switches and programming. MegaHurtz Robotics invites you to see what this year's FIRST Robotics Challenge presents in "STRONGHOLD" a medieval themed game where the robots will have to breach their opponents defenses, attack their tower with boulders and eventually take the castle! The Race is On!At posting, we have only 43 days left! On Saturday the Team traveled to LMC for the big Kickoff Event. There were hundreds of students and mentors their all eagerly awaiting the big reveal. What will the game look like this year? What will the robot need to do? This year FIRST delivered with a themed game: STRONGHOLD. As each of our questions about the game were answered, more questions arose as to how we're going to accomplish this. The students are excited, the mentors are excited and no one is expecting to get much sleep over the next month. Thank you to all our supporters and sponsors that make this possible. Every little bit helps. Also, we encourage anyone interested in our program to stop by and talk with us. If you're interested in seeing us in action or want to get involved, please use our contact form. Stop in and see the workshop, we might even let you drive the robot!
On Saturday, January 9th FIRST Robotics teams from all across the country will travel to their local kickoff event and simultaneously tune in to watch the launch of the 2016 season. Unlike other sports, teams come to this event every year having absolutely no idea what the game will be, what the rules are or what the field will look like. They only know one thing: They will have to build a robot. During this nationwide broadcast, the new game and playing field will be unveiled and teams will receive a Kit of Parts made up of donated materials worth tens of thousands of dollars. Teams are given the rules but no instruction on how to build their robot. Other than some basic guidelines and a couple lists of legal parts, teams have to design, build and program their way to victory and they only get 42 days to do it!
Our Season Timeline: January 9 @ 10:00 AM to February 23 @ 11:59 PM – Build Season. The team meets almost every day for two to four hours. All robot construction must stop by 2/23/2016 @ 11:59 PM. March 3 through 5 – Kettering University District Event Free and Open to the public March 10 through 12 – St. Joseph High School District Event Free and Open to the public The FIRST Robotics Competition is said to be the ultimate Sport for the Mind. The 2016 season will be the third for MegaHurtz Robotics (Buchanan High School’s robotics team). Last season we finished fourth in our District Competition. We are very excited to see what this year’s challenges will be and look forward to how we will meet them. Ask anyone involved and they will agree this is “the hardest fun you’ll ever have.” The 2015 Robotics season ended on an extreme high for the students and mentors of MegaHurtz Robotics. After finishing 34th out of 40 in the Kentwood District Competition two weeks ago because of numerous software and field communication issues, the team pulled together and made it all the way to the semi-finals where they finished 4th overall.
Kentwood was a disaster. It seemed that nothing went right for this team and what made things worse is that their problems were unexplainable. FIRST engineers, Field Techs and Control Systems Leads huddled together both on the field and off to help determine why things would just not talk to each other and everyone came back confused, frustrated, and without any answers. Immediately after getting back the team set to work "starting over." The robot for the most part was sound, but they needed a better and more reliable way to pickup and move totes. The computer systems had to be completely wiped and reformatted, and the robot code needed to be rebuilt from the group up. They were not taking any chances when they got to St. Joe. Starting things off right, MegaHurtz was the third team to arrive at the St. Joe Districts ensuring they could get setup and on the practice field as early as possible. If there were any bugs, they wanted to know immediately so they could be squashed quickly. All the hard work paid off. It was clear the robot was performing much better and all the communication issues from the last event were gone. Adopting the same principal that made them successful last year: "You can't be good at everything so figure out what you are good at and then be the best." The team focused making stacks of four totes as fast as possible. Averaging 3 stacks a match, MegaHurtz quickly proved to be one of the most efficient stack builders and movers on the field. There were several teams with robots that could taller stacks or that could place the bins, but when it came time for alliance selection the number seven captain needed a robot that could do exactly what the MegaHurtz bot had mastered. The team was invited to the 7th ranked Alliance. Team Virus, MegaHurtz and The Gearheads held their own all the way to the semi-finals where they finished fourth overall making this the most successful season ever. We spent six weeks designing and building our robot. Six weeks all culminate into what is suppose to be the greatest experience your team will have each season; your first competition. Instead of this grand reception and amazing thrill of the event, our team met with disappointment and heartache. Each teams plays 12 Qualification matches. Our first time out things appears to be good. We connected to the field, our robot performed exactly as expected in the Autonomous Phase and worked well in Teleop. The second time out, however, things went very, very wrong. The robot performed in Auton, but failed to respond to input in Teleop. We flagged down the Field Engineer and he ran over to help us diagnose the problem. The short version of this tragic story is that after two engineers and a control systems lead looking everything over, the official diagnosis is "we don't know what is wrong." and "It doesn't make any sense." Compounding this failure to make sense is the fact that when the robot is directly connected to our driver's station, it works fine. The problem only ever happened when we connected to the field. This would lead a logical person to believe that the problem was with the field. I fully believe the problem was a combination of issues with the field and something in our driver's station. There is no way to verify or even test for this as we are not allowed access to the field except for matches. To mitigate this, we will completely rewrite all our robot code, re-image the robot computer and the driver's station computers. Doing this will make it nearly impossible that any issues we have be something with our software. If it fails again it is either our robot computer or something with the field. We've decided to get to our next competition as early as they will let us to test the new systems. At 3:30 PM today we set off for East Kentwood High School in Kentwood Michigan. We estimated 90 minutes of travel, but the weather was not cooperative. The wind was blowing badly and it slowed the Jeep and trailer down to a maximum of 60 MPH so it took us just over two hours. We checked in at the Hotel first, dropped off our stuff and non-essential personnel and headed on to the school. Load in was fairly easy. They did not have any decent signage to mark how to get to the drop off door. To their credit, they provided a couple really nice maps, however the maps were zoomed out too far to really see where roads and parking lots were. Plus they were satellite photos of a beautiful summer day and it's March in Michigan. The giant snow piles make things look a little different.
We reached our pit and were able to unbag the robot about 6:30. Things went fairly well after that. We had a couple electrical issues to update but that only took a few minutes. We were really hoping to get some drive time in and maybe even a practice match, however the inspectors felt we had several rough and sharp edges that needed to be filed down. Unfortunately that took us quite a while to resolve. We also discovered our Autonomous programming needed to be adjusted because of the difference in friction cause by the carpet in the arena. This is just one of those things you can't plan for. You have to go to an event and take things for a test drive. We made a change to the code and will test it first thing in the morning. Tomorrow will be a big day. We're all really excited! Just over six weeks; that's plenty of time, right? Who are we kidding. There is never enough time. You can always user a little more time to design, a little more time to build and a lot more time to drive. Some how, we managed to get everything built and tested on Stop Build Day and were able to spend the evening driving and tweaking. The video below shows a short clip of a test drive. The team worked hard to have our robot ready for competition, so for now it's packed up in a huge bag awaiting our first adventure. Mecanum drive is a method of driving using specially designed wheels that allow the robot to drive in any direction without changing the orientation of the robot. A robot with a conventional drivetrain (four or six wheels) must turn in the direction it needs to drive. With this year's game being all about movement on the field, we felt this would be the best solution to optimize our effectiveness in picking up and moving the totes and bins. As of now, we have the chassis configured and the wheel mounts set. We still need to actually fasten the wheels in place but it works well enough now to complete a few test runs. Our next steps are to get the tote lifting mechanism from our design into production and then mounted to the robot. This video shows our second test of the Mecanum Drive after the programming team uploaded their code to the robot. The first test was unsuccessful because a wire disconnected from the motor controller. Someone on the electronics team failed to properly crimp the connector.
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