Kickoff

We - the robotics team - were really looking forward to saturday, 8th of January. After a year spent at home in front of our coumputers and after months of build-up, we were finally supposed to attend the kickoff of First Robotics Competition - Rapid React.

As every year, we gathered at PORG in Libeň, where we waited until 6 pm, when the reveal stream started. After long welcome speeches from the new CEO of FIRST and from the representatives of the main sponsors of the competition, we finally got what we all came for - the reveal of the playing field and the game animation (see the video below). In short - the very basic principle of the game is that we have to transport oversized tennis balls from anywhere on the field into one of the two large baskets in the middle of the field. At the end of the game, we have to climb onto a series of bars at different heights.

After the stream, we started discussing, how the robot should look like, what should be the top priorities for us, what are some must-haves on the robot, how can we gather as many points as we can etc. Even though we haven't made any decisions yet, we we came up with many interesting ideas that we should look into in weeks to come.

The next day, we arrived to school quite early. At first, we went on with the discussions from last night. We did some basic calculations - how much can the robot swing during climbing, how fast do we have to shoot the balls to reach the baskets and how many points can we gather by doing these things. After that, we went to the lab to start prototyping.

The first mechanism that we tested was a lift for the balls - a couple of rows of rubber wheels that are suppesed to store the balls and than transport them into one of the baskets. When testing this prototype with drills, we found out that with the current configuration, we are able to shoot the ball two meters in the air (even though the height required is 2,64 meters, we still have a lot of space for improvement on this design).

The second mechanism that we made was a prototype of the arm that we want to use for climbing onto the bars. The arm is made out of two aluminium extrusions that can slide into each other using a winch. Extending the arm is enabled by surgical tubing stretched between the extrusions and stability is achieved by a slot that has  security bolt sliding in it.

After succesful day of testing, we went home ready to return to the lab on thursday afternoon