Week One Recap

With the assistance of WildStang parents, the field has come a long way in just one week. From receiving the field instructions on Saturday, the hub, a funnel used for scoring the game piece “cargo”, has been built and has already been successfully used with our prototypes. Currently, one of the cargo exits is built with the other three in the process of being built.

The mechanical subteam has been hard at work prototyping lots of different intakes, outtakes, and launch angles. Week one for the mechanical subteam has been very favorable. After some mislaunches and reiterations, the prototypes have been successful in completing their task on the field. This week, 112 and 111 will be meeting separately to discuss what they want their robots to look like. Their goal for this week is to come up with a robot design based on the subsystems they’re going to use. They will decide what intake, drive train, shooter, and storage they are going to use based on the prototypes that they built and tested last week.

The electrical team worked on stripping, crimping, soldering, and attaching terminals to the motors and spark maxes. They prepped the motors for the mechanical subteam to use in their prototypes. This week, they have the important job of assisting mechanical in making their plans for a robot come to life. Once mechanical creates their plan for a robot, electrical will be dedicated soldering, crimping, and other tasks to make sure that the robot they built is able to be powered and do all the tasks that a successful robot will complete.

The software subteam has had an important role in working on the logistics of a new attendance system that is being put into place. It is important to track the hours that everyone in the WSRP has been attending. The software subteam helped set up the attendance system, while also writing and analyzing code that will be used on this year’s robots. They have been analyzing code that was used in previous years while also writing brand new code for this year.

The strategy subteam worked on setting up a scouting application for the competitions with different categories to assist in scouting. They have tested this application with different games, some played by our human team members on our new playing field, some played by our human team members on our new playing field. This week they are planning on using FIRST’s virtual field to test the application further with game simulations.

Finally, the communications subteam has been working on writing blog posts, filming the progress of week one, and has been working on different projects, prepping for the competitions. They have come up with some button designs, and begun some work on award submissions with students from other subteams.

Week one has been a highly successful week for the WSRP and week two will be no different. While we know that our season has been off to a great start, we hope that all other teams are doing just as well.