In my eleven years of student robotics competition experience, I've seen many, many teams make the same unrecoverable mistake over and over - working like crazy on the robot until the last minute before an event without spending much time practicing to play the competitive game well. The result of getting too geeked out on the technology like this nearly always results in a robot and a team that underachieves in competition. I'm determined not to let that happen to the Robobraves in our rookie VRC season. So, armed with that idea, along with our fully functional drivetrain and a clear plan for iteration 1.0 of a single-jointed arm accumulator that reaches all goal heights (see previous blog entries for details), we began dividing and conquering at Tuesday's meeting.
Half of the team, with clear instructions, began driver practice with the drivetrain while the other half set to work on the arm hypotenuse. Half way through the meeting, the groups switched giving all present team members some experience measuring, cutting, filing, assembling, and applying corresponding safety procedures as well as simulating what play might me like in the Gateway interaction zone in a two-minute time period - moving toward goals, avoiding an opponent robot, delivering game objects and taking clear instructions from an on-field coach.
During both activities, professionalism was stressed - measuring carefully, cutting straight, not over filing, knowing the value of keeping everything straight and square, using the safety glasses as necessary, moving as efficiently as possible with the drivetrain while simulating game conditions, getting to know how to slide, spin, and turn the robot to take full advantage of the drivetrain attributes this robot possesses.
We've got a long way to go, but by meeting's end the team had a better sense of the drivetrain, playing in the interaction zone, operating from the player station, thinking about efficient and effective movements as well as having improved just a little with our manufacturing and assembly skills.
On the surface, it looked like not much happened at today's meeting, but in reality, this was really our most important step thus far. Look for all meetings from here forward to include some kind of driver practice as the relationship between man and machine both off and on the field of play is critical to team success.
Meeting photos, here and as always, learn more about our parent organization, Upper Perk Robotics at uprobotics.org
-Kressly
Nice blog! I would like to attend a meeting.
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