5273 ARC Thunder 2019-2020 FTC Robot
In the 2019-2020 FIRST Tech Challenge Season we were tasked with
building a robot whose main goal was to stack large blocks, which were
similar in shape to a LEGO brick, as high as possible within a 2 minute
time period.
Of the many challenges we faced, the biggest was that
our robot had to fit inside an 18 inch cube at the start of each match.
this meant that we had to have some sort of mechanism that could extend
vertically to place the blocks down.
During this season I was the
team leader which meant I was tasked with organizing each sub team to make
sure deadlines were met and the quality of the product was acceptable. In
addition I was also a main contributor to the design and build of the
robot.
The process our team took from challenge reveal to final
product followed the following steps: brainstorming sessions to come up
with a library of ideas, discussing each idea and boiling down to one idea
that we would build for the season. Begin design in on Whiteboards and
paper then transfer to CAD. Next we built the 2 robots of the first
prototype. From this point on we would given on robot to the code team to
program on and continue to improve the second robot, then switch every
major build advancement. This allowed us to progress in our code
development as well as our build.
In the end we had build and
programmed one of the best robots our club had ever seen. The lessons I
learned through leading this team were how to manage a large team with
varying levels of experience from none at all to those who could build
and/or code the robot by themselves. I also was able to improve on my
ideation and design skills to produce a sound robot that consistently
scored highly at competitions.