“What’s happening with the ThunderBots?,” Burbank High STEAM Lab, Summer, Off-season, 2023
For a few months now, we’ve had a nice “not-a-box” box tucked away in controls that we had to ignore to focus on working through the rest of the season with Frankie. However… now we can talk about it as a “box” box!
People… we’ve got swerve drive!
For those who don’t know what swerve drive is, imagine a swivel chair and how it can go anywhere at any time — that’s what our robot can now do. Compared to our standard tank drive, we’ve a major challenge ahead of us when trying to figure out how this works.
No more rectangular frame. Individual swerve modules mounted to corners. And finally an electronics board. We’re now ready to move onto the hard part: coding.
Surprisingly, we already have a name: Prototype-Swervebot 1, aka, PS1.
Throughout the rest of the build space, we’ve been working on a major redesign, using summer to not have to worry about people going in and out during the school year. In Fabrication, we completely rearranged our shop, creating a dedicated storage space and different project tables. Business and Design have switched spaces, moving Design into the newly rearranged (former) Business office and Business into the larger area of the build space. Although Controls has not been the victim of a major redesign yet, there are talks of switching up the room’s layout while they work outside for the electronics board on PS1.
All in all, we’ve had our hands full with getting things done during the past few months as we prepare for the new school year, a more efficient work cycle, and fall off-season competitions.
“Build Season”, Burbank High STEAM Lab, February 4 to March 17, Season, 2023
“Los Angeles Regional”, Da Vinci High School, March 16 to March 19, Season, 2023
Does anyone actually read these things? For those few out there, this is what you have been waiting for: the grand culmination from the buildup throughout this season. However, simply asking how our robot did is not such an easy question this time around — rankings or points scored or pictures do not do this robot justice.
The past month has led us through the rest of our build season all the way to competition. However, we can’t start there, let’s start with the hectically time-warping back and forth that plagued us the last month leading up to Los Angeles Regional (LAR).
Actually, let’s start over. Building a robot is not easy by any means. Trying to do it in six weeks? Even worse. However, our team pulled through and kept rising to each challenge, overcoming them. Every. Single. Time. Smoking out a motor with their arm. Finagling with the plunger grabber (intended for grip, not to… well, “plunge” game pieces). Retightening ever-loosening loctited-bolts. No matter what, the heart of every single one of us endured. We walked into LAR with a complete robot (massive thanks to Sam, Lead Mentor at 1148 Harvard Westlake Robotics).
LAR. 2023. We had been there before with 2022’s Kitty, and this is historically our “home” regional. The team was ready to take on the competition… until our arm smoked another motor.
It’s strange, you never forget the smell of burnt motor. Worse yet, how much it lingers.
We tried to make it work. Motors upon motors smoked. Faced with a difficult choice: do we try to get the three-jointed arm working in the face of its own self destruction or do we choose to amputate, saving the rest of the robot?
We chose to save it. Taking off the forearm joint, we attached the wrist with the grabber onto the elbow joint, switching the shoulder motor to two (massive thanks to Terry from Team 7185 Tartan Robotics at Glendora High School for giving us the materials), and… the gearing on it was so strong it could hold itself completely horizontal with no power at all. As impressive as it was scary, it was certainly the fix necessary to keep us on the field (nothing beats the pride twisted with horror in Controls Mentor Alex’s face, the mad scientist in him was quite excited).
Let’s take a second from the chaos of that arm: it was stressful trying to get it working. For the driver and I, trying to make sure we could control everything on the field was a challenge as well. In the heat of competition — deafening cheers, blasting music, blinding lights — one thing rang clear:
“980!”
In the photos on the right you can see our team in the stands with 980 signs, something I had never experienced before — they were cheering… for us? For us! I remember turning to our driver to find the same glowing smile on his face — he heard them too. I almost cried knowing that the heart of our people — our team — was with us all the way — from Burbank to the field.
Managing to last until the very end, Frankie went out with another surprise for the team when it twisted, yes twisted, a solid aluminum hex shaft in it’s last few rounds. Startled, we quickly adapted to make a bandaid fix, putting Frankie back onto the field for the last two rounds of the regional.
All in all, Frankie endured. The drive team and pit crew endured. Team 980 – we – endured. With all the challenges being thrown at us, we continuously proved our heart – our care for what we had created – could not be swayed. That demonstrates why this creation is not Team 980’s Monster.
— Luci, Captain of Team 980 Impact team (Elan, Maggie, Yogini) Drive team (Kelsey, Alex, Rylan, Sydney, Luci)
“Build Season”, Burbank High STEAM Lab, January 9 – February 4, Season, 2023
In the rush of building a robot, time flies seemingly more than usual. Through the last month, the Thunderbots have begun building their drivetrain with a standard West Coast drive (with a few modifications to their frame to account for getting onto the Charging Station or “seesaw”). Nearing the end of the design for their arm and grabber, they are well on their way to a powerful robot.
On the controls side, they have been refining their electrical skills and training rookies while the programming side has been working with Kitty (2022 robot) to reconfigure its IMU and develop a balancing program and velocity controlled drive.
Let me take a moment to talk about the rookies for a moment. After the initial hesitance (that most all new students have), they flourished. Diving headfirst into designing and prototyping, they have demonstrated incredible ingenuity and creativity approaching the season’s challenge.
Not only have the rookies flourished under the pressure, the student leaders and departmental leads have as well. Taking in a significant amount of people under their department – especially with the pressure of creating an entire robot from scratch? That is no easy feat. Yet, they have navigated it wonderfully; balancing training and the work of their departments, they have laid a strong foundation for the rookies to build themselves upon.
As Captain, I cannot be more proud of every single person on our team for their dedication, ingenuity, and passion; as a student, I cannot be more proud to find myself growing in such fantastic company. From the robot, to leadership, to rookies, Team 980 is showing great promise for this upcoming season!
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