Thursday, March 22, 2018

Out of Bag Day II: Making Autonomous Faster

Today we used up all six hours of our Robot Access Period, also known as Out of Bag Time.

We devoted the first two to three hours to fixing mechanical issues, such as lightening the robot and making intake grip the cube better. Since our robot’s so close to the weight limit, we needed to lighten it as much as possible. We did this mainly by drilling big holes in the robot’s drive frame.

After we finished working on mechanical issues, programming took over and worked on testing some more autonomous modes. Along the way, we made many improvements, such as making turning faster (it takes less than one second, whereas before it took at least four) and more accurate.

Although we primarily focused on an autonomous mode that starts in the middle and drives to either side of the switch, our lead programmer is happy to report that our robot can now put a cube on the scale in autonomous.

GO ROBOTOTES!!!