Robotics Mentoring Reflection 4/20/20
Wesley Reed | Robotics Reflections 2020
In the time since my last reflection, a lot has drastically changed. Due to COVID-19, FIRST has suspended all events and cancelled the 2020 championship which has derailed our group. We were one of the teams lucky enough to compete in a week 1 event. At that event, we placed rather poorly but has the highest accuracy rate of scoring a power cell into the inner goal (which is the hardest one to score into). Our team has coined this the “Woo-hoo rate” and it’s awesome to be able to say we had the best Woo-hoo rate of the 60+ robots at the event.
After the event, we started making to robot better, focusing on making the shooter more versatile, the power cell storage faster, and adding the endgame mechanism to the robot. Unfortunately with the season being postponed/cancelled, we won’t be able to complete the robot until our team leader determines it is safe to return to the robotics house. Luckily, there are many off-season competitions that we will hopefully be able to attend so we do plan to return and finish the robot. Even if we don’t get to compete again, it just wouldn’t feel right leaving a robot unfinished.
Despite the distance, our team is working hard to stay engaged and keep working. We are currently designing a robot out of cardboard to participate in the AndyMark Robot Fight Night using a cloud-based CAD software called OnShape, and we already have at least one design we hope to compete with.
Questions to think about:
- Are all of the students involved?
Under the circumstances, I believe that as many students are involved as are able, and want to. Due to the unusual circumstances this is a really hard question to answer.
- What can I do to make sure all of the students are involved?
Again, a hard question to answer due to COVID-19, however I do have some coding projects that I can set up to help keep the controls kids engaged.
- How is the team progressing toward their goals?
We don’t have any clear goals at the moment other than the CAD design for the Fight Night robot, and in that respect we are progressing well.
- What am I doing to help the team toward their goals?
I haven’t been able to help with the CAD design, but right now every hand is on that so they don’t really need my help with it. I can help controls by adding those projects I talked about above.