Huskie Robotics is going to Worlds! For the past 10 weeks, I have spent about 26 hours a week working on and perfecting a robot that would carry us to the FIRST Robotics championship, and after our competition right before spring break, I can finally say we accomplished that goal. That said, we didn’t actually qualify for winning the actual competition, rather we won the Engineering Innovation award which also awards us a trip to Houston April 18th- 22nd, BUT I dare say this is even cooler because NASA now sponsored our registration fee.

I honestly love robotics and despite how nerdy and lame I thought it was going to be when my mom made me join Freshman year, my high school experience has been shaped by the skills I’ve learned and the friends I’ve made at robotics. I get how it can sound super complicated and overwhelming to anyone I am trying to explain the competition season too, but when you break it all down week by week, you realize that you don’t have to be the smartest person ever to still have a significant impact on the team. I am living proof of that actually. So, as I go down memory lane of this past build season, I want to share that very breakdown; at the end of each week, all subteam leads have to write and submit a Weekly Stakeholder, a paragraph breaking down the work of that week, or sprint. Since I am the assembly lead, my workload of very limited at the very start of the season when we were still in the designing phase but over the course of my Stakeholders, you can tell that our job because increasingly more interesting.

Sprint 1: This week in assembly we have been finishing up our pre-season projects. We finished assembling the practice robot chassis, complete with our four new mk4i swerve modules, and have passed it on to electrical so they can finish the wiring up before we give it to software to be tested and driven. We also completed assembling the operator console and will be able to install the plate of buttons and the other driver station elements once we receive it from electrical. We started prototyping for the manipulator and intake mechanisms and will continue on with those into Sprint 2, as well as working towards a design for other features as well.

Sprint 3: Assembly spent a lot of this week working on elements of the practice bot. The practice bumpers were fully assembled and the orange bumper fabric will be folded over the plywood during sprint 4. We transferred the camera mount from Sierra, last year’s robot, to the practice robot and adjusted the poly carb holding the electrical elements to accommodate it. As software utilizes the practice robot for testing, the assembly has been ensuring that the chassis and each mk4i module are properly located and protected. Going into Sprint 4, assembly will start the assembly of the manipulator feature, the falcon, and the gearboxes necessary for the manipulator, and finish up with the practice bumpers.

Sprint 5: As the weeks go by, assembly is gradually becoming busier with assembly features for this year’s competition robot. In this sprint, we were able to assemble all of the motors and gearboxes for each of the features, including the Neo motor with the 5:1 Ultraplanetary gearbox for the intake. We had the bandwidth to start assembling the extra mk4i swerve module but quickly realized that we did not have all of the necessary parts in order to do so. We compiled a list of the parts that we would need to order to fully assemble the module but have gotten as far in the assembly as currently possible. Assembly of the robot drivetrain and arm features has been delayed by the large number of pieces that needed to be cut by CNC and the low supply of the necessary rivets, so our sprint 6 goal is to get all features to the assembly stage.

Sprint 7: As expected, assembly was very busy this week working on all robot features and beginning their integration. The arm mechanism was fully assembled with the manipulator successfully mounted to it. By the end of Saturday’s meeting, the structure was then mounted to the drivetrain’s superstructure! Additionally, our red and blue competition bumpers were assembled with 3 out of the 4 being fully completed and 1 yet to be wrapped in fabric. Going into sprint 8, we will finish assembling the intake mechanism, transfer the mk4i swerve modules from the practice bot to the competition robot, completely integrate all of the features, and have a fully assembled robot!

Sprint 9 (Midwest Regional Competition): On Thursday, the first day, we worked hard to make the elevator more rigid (as it was not stable while extending). Our bearing blocks, which connect the stages of the elevator and allow it to extend, had been taking a lot of damage so we replaced what we could and made changes so that they would take little to no force. We made a lot other small changes throughout the day as we could. On Friday and Saturday, we competed in many matches and worked on the robot depending on what needed to be fixed. The latches that we use to hold our bumpers to the robot were not working as well as we hoped, so we started to bolt them instead. As we watched our robot and other robots perform, we all made notes on what we can improve with Nova for the next competition. We ended up walking away from the regional with the Innovation in Control Award and lots of motivation for the next competition. Overall it was a great experience!

This Worlds competition will be my very last robotics competition and I am so sad to leave this part of my life behind because it has given me so many wonderful memories. That said, I am very excited to miss school and enjoy the Texas heat. And create more memories, compete hard, and have a wonderful ending to my robotics career, I guess.