Team 980 has reached the half-way point of build season, which means we’re only about two weeks behind schedule!
Actually, we’ve made good progress in our robot design. Thanks to David Toyne (who was off in sub-tropical Iowa last week) we’ve got drawings for a very mass-efficient robot chassis. The base for our drive components and electronics will be built from 80/20 and the bumper frame will be 1″-square aluminum tube. The front two wheels are hinged with gas springs to serve as shock absorbers. The front and rear wheels are driven by timing belts that also serve as “tank treads” for crossing bumps and getting onto the platform. Our students have been experimenting with the kicker prototype with very encouraging results. We’re now looking at low-mass, effective design approaches to getting up onto the tower platform.
The software controls team has made great progress as well. We are controlling last year’s robot with the new drive station PC and updated firmware in the cRIO robot controller. New students have been learning the fundamentals of robot control: how the motors work, the end-to-end operation of the control systems and programming techniques. The “floor plan” for the robot control electronics has been started. This year’s robot has some tight packaging constraints, so properly configuring the electronics is quite a challenging task.
Thanks to the help of Steve Smith, Team 980 now has a well-organized build space. So the pace has definitely picked up. Our robot chassis base has been assembled, with more parts on their way. This week’s goal is to assemble the primary drive components and see how the robot negotiates the bumps. Assembly of the remaining robot hardware will continue through next week, so our controls and drive team get a crack at running the robot before the pre-ship scrimmage.
Team 980 meets Mon-Fri from 5:30 pm to 8:00 pm and on Saturday from 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm. Come join us at the NEY Center in Altadena and help create a terrific robot!
