Systemetric

Key Facts

• Mechanum drive system, allowing the robot to drive sideways
• Pneumatic grabber that is capable of picking up game pieces from the ground and placing them on any of the pegs on the first two rows
• Equipped with light sensors, a compass and an accelerometer for sophisticated autonomous operation
• Minibot deployment facility to place the minibot (Goliath) on the designated pole in the arena

Game Details

The match begins with a 15 second Autonomous Period in which robots operate independently of driver inputs and must hang designated inflated shapes, 'Ubertubes', to score extra points. For the rest of the match, drivers control robots and try to maximize their alliance score by hanging as many logo pieces as possible. Any logo piece hung on the same peg as an Ubertube receives double points. If teams assemble the logo pieces on their scoring grids to form the FIRST logo (triangle, circle, square, in a horizontal row in that order), the points for the entire row are doubled.

The match ends with robots deploying minibots, small electro-mechanical assemblies that are independent of the host robot, onto vertical poles. The minibots race to the top of the pole to trigger a sensor and earn additional bonus points.

Performance

The robot generally performed well throughout the competition, successfully placing game pieces on the first two rows of the racks in all the games it played. However it was not able to successfully deploy the minibot, primarily due to driver alignment issues. It also did not have autonomous functionality on the first day of the competition, but this was rectified on the second day, which worked as intended but did not succeed in placing an Ubertube. The robot was affected throughout the competition by communication issues with FIRST's Field Management System, issues which we were unable to replicate in testing and were unfortunately deemed mostly beyond our control. This combined with the scoring for the alliances we were placed in meant the robot did not score well in the leaderboards despite its successes, ranking it 61^st out of 66 teams.

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