FRC Build Season 2016 - Jan 17 Update

The RoboSpartans have been hard at work ever since the new game was revealed at FRC Kickoff! Here is the current status of our design:

There is major progress being made on many of the subsystems of the robot:

Launcher:

There are two competing designs being tried out. In our testing over the last two days the vertical launcher has made a lot of progress but there are still a few issues being worked on. The horizontal launch is progressing very well and in testing over the last two days has been able to consistently shoot the boulder into the high goal from a fixed point! Now we are working towards being able to score goals from multiple locations and angles by enhancing the design using a tilting mechanism.

Chassis/Drivetrain:

We are still planning on using pneumatic wheels for the final robot barring the unexpected. Pneumatic wheels have been ordered but we are still challenged in terms of getting the right hubs to connect the motor to the wheels. The hubs provided by Andymark are on a major backorder and will not be available for several weeks. As as stopgap, we have got the RSC 3D printer and are using it to print hubcaps. Today we completed the first print of a hub. It has not been tested but appears to be successful. It takes almost a day to print each one and will take us some time to get all 6 that we need.

Apart from that we have started assembling the physical chassis according to our design. The CAD design is complete and by the end of day today we have completed more of the drilling and preparing the gussets. By end of day Monday we should have assembled the chassis. To test it we plan to use existing solid 8 inch wheels from our stock until the pneumatic wheels are ready. By end of Monday we should be able to attach those wheels to the chassis and have a chassis that can be moved manually but may not yet be coupled to the motors. But we do expect to see a lot of progress in the first half of the week.

Integration:

CAD designing has begun on how to integrate the design of all the subsystems has begun and will proceed in parallel with all the other work.

Programming:

Some preliminary thought has been put into the programming approach but over the next few weeks this track will start doing a lot of design work. It all depends on how the rest of the design is finalized.

Looking forward we should expect to have a first cut of an assembled functional robot by end of week two and doing more robust testing. That should allow us to start working towards a finalized locked down design.