This past week marked the beginning of the six week build season for the 2019 First Robotics Competition (FRC) Game titled Destination: Deep Space. Each year, Week One’s primary purpose is to thoroughly design and test prototypes of various robot components in order to lay the foundation for the remaining five weeks of build season.
In the context of mechanical, team members have already settled on two potential intake designs, the mechanism used to efficiently gather cargo in the form of inflated rubber balls, and there is a mostly finalized design for the hatch panel scoring system. Moreover, the computer aided design (CAD) team has already started work on creating working models of the Titanium Robotics 2019 robot. While the final robot is being designed, Gaia, one of the 2018 off-season projects, is already able to drive, and is therefore being used by the drive team for drills until mechanical members complete plans to convert Gaia into the official 2019 practice robot.
Engineering President Olivia Cameron comments that “it is great to see that every part of engineering has a clear goal that they are working hard to achieve.” She also adds that she loves “to see so many new faces in the robotics room.”
Meanwhile, despite the lack of a physical robot, programming is working on two major projects: robot vision and minimap to solve for Destination: Deep Space’s main obstacles. First, successful teams must have extremely precise control systems that can quickly align with the relatively small scoring locations during the manual teleoperated period. Second, this year’s game also features a non-traditional autonomous period because drive teams are restricted solely by sight. By using a vision system for both teleoperated and autonomous, Titanium Robotics will be able to utilize greater precision when doing any task. In addition, minimap is a project meant to accurately display robot locations on the field from a computer monitor, allowing drive team members to receive real time feedback to make holistically guided decisions.
Overall, Titanium Robotics is well on track to completing another successful build season. Remember to look out for the annual Rollout event featuring the finished 2019 robot once build season is complete. Titanium Robotics will attend the Orange County Regional during the first week of March and conclude with the Idaho Regional during the last week of March. These two regionals will each provide opportunities to earn a coveted spot to the FRC World Championships hosted in Houston in late April. You can also find the official game animation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mew6G_og-PI.
