Where are we now?
We are at the 3rd week of build season and things are starting to take shape. We are now in the design and prototyping stage in the process of building a robot that will competing in the FIRST™ STEAMworks competition. We had to design the various parts and mechanisms that go into a successful robot i. e. the pickup mechanism, ball pickup, and drive train.
Fuel shooter demonstration
The first step in the design process was to get together and decide on what we wanted the robot to accomplish. In the team meeting, all of the students and mentors were to brainstorm on what aspects of the robot that we felt were important. We compiled an Excel spread sheet that contained aspects and ideas of the robot i. e. robot height, fixed / non-fixed shooter, drive train, and wheel type among other things. After the Excel spread sheet was drawn up, the team ranked the ideas / concepts on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being not important and 5 being the most important. After the team finished ranking the concepts and ideas, the team split up into 4 groups, and each group was tasked with designing and prototyping a specific component of the robot. We had a group who designed a ballpickup mechanism, another who designed a shooter, and another responsible for a climbing mechanism that will allow our robot to climb the rope onto the airship.
The teams began this process by first drawing rough sketches of concepts that they came up with, then constructing a proof-ofconcept model, usually made of wood. This is called bread boarding. These bread boarded Building the airship field element ideas are then presented / demonstrated to the for the practice field rest of the team in order to gain valuable feedback on possible improvements that could be made to the mockup.
Issue 3: January 30, 2017 PAGE 2