Week 1(+) is in the books!

Meeting 1 - understanding the game

On January 8th, Pearadox had it's first day back after an offseason of rookie training and outreach events. Kickoff is the day where FRC teams all over the world watch the game animation for this years' challenge.

After the game animation ends, our team broke up into groups to go through the rules, discuss different strategies, all the things we think a robot can do, and start figuring out what we want our robot to accomplish in a match. There's a lot of interest and intrigue in a very challenging climbing aspect of the new game, where there are 2 rungs that are higher than you can reach from the ground. 

The best way for us to try to rank high at a competition and win it is by winning matches (of course) but also earning other "Ranking Points" by scoring 20 game pieces or by having our alliance of 3 robots earn 16 hanging points. If we can get to the high or traversal rung, then we only need to rely on 1 other robot on our alliance to climb. 

At the end of the day Saturday, we determined that we need to do some prototyping and absorb the game some more before we make any commitments to what our robot should do.

We're also fortunate to have had several alumni come back for kickoff. They share a little bit about their experience on the team, what they're doing now, and then help with building the new field with some parent volunteers so our current team members can focus on the robot. 

Meeting 2 - prototyping begins 

Students began sketching out and prototyping ideas they have. We quickly realized that if we want to be able to complete the Cargo Bonus by ourselves, we not only need a good way to score the cargo balls, but collect them as well. 

​We also started making some progress on building field elements.

meeting 3 - Design review

On Tuesdays, we do a design review to keep all the students on our large team updated as to the other things going on on the team. As this was only our 3rd meeting of the season, it was more focused on setting what the requirements are for subsystems and priorities for the team. We determined our priority order should be: ​

• Small base optimized for half field distances ​
  • If the base is narrow, we can fit 2 robots closer to the fender ​
  • Fast enough to conceivably do the quintent​
  • Helps with squeezing in on the hangar last minute
• No unintended cargo get in/on our robot (no "catching" cargo)​
• Fast floor intake (critical for reducing cycle time, or even picking up opponent cargo for defense) ​
• upper hub fender shot (best chance of winning, and can solo cargo bonus) ​
• mid rung climber (3 robot hanging RP) ​
• (if we get all of the above then) auton that can do a quintent (or at least 4 and pray for a HP shot) so we can do one less cycle for the cargo bonus...which gives you more time for a  ​
• (if we get the above then) high rung climb for a 2 robot hanging RP ​

Desirements (ie not requirements, but if we can get it for "free" as part of our other designs than great):

• Low-rung climber (if we have 2 other robots that can only do mid rung) ​
• Traversal rung (if we have an alliance with 1 no-climber and 1 low-only climber) ​
• Outtake cargo (to feed an elite shooter) ​​

Meetings 4-6

We continued prototyping and got to a good stopping point on our field build. We have team members busy on numerous things - from prototypes of subsystems, to preparing awards submissions, and teaching new team members how to build a robot while keeping our parts and tools organized. On Monday we had a meeting to discuss how we might fit our subsystems together. By the end of the day Monday, we had accomplished the following:

• assembled a base (25" x 28") with a gearbox geared for ~12 feet per second. We got electronics mounted on it as well; we should hopefully have it driving at our Wednesday meeting
• Our sophomores (plus some freshman we pulled from our very large number of freshman) assembled a Kit Of Parts (KOP) base for our "sophomore" everybot...which we obviously need to rename. The base is fully assembled and we're excited about the Everybot reveal!
• Our freshman assembled most of a KOP base for our "freshman" Everybot. There's a little bit left to do.
• We determined to have our freshman and sophomore build their own Everybots as their top priority to ensure they get some hands on experience this year to make up for the huge lack of hands on training from nearly 2 years off from meetings due to COVID. 
• We've assembled the 3 major field elements: a Hub (the large goal in the center of the field), the Hangar (where robots hang at the end of the match), and the Terminal (where human players can put game pieces back onto the field of play). If you're in the Houston area and want to practice at our field, reach out to us! Huge thank you to our parents and alumni that have been coming to meetings to make this possible and allow our students to focus on the robot.
• We got a couple of prototypes together for collecting the game piece, storing the game piece, and scoring the game piece
• Our chairmans team is making a lot of progress on their short answers and essay for our awards submission due Feb 17th
• We also had students volunteering at the local FTC competition - students helped to set up the field on Friday and volunteered in numerous capacities on Saturday