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:

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

Robotics Mentoring Reflection 2/2/20

Wesley Reed | Robotics Reflections 2020

Over the last month I have been working with a group of students on the Lakota Robotics Team (FRC Team 1038) to code a robot to compete in the 2020 FIRST Robotics Competition, Infinite Recharge. I feel like I should be doing these reflections more often, however not a lot has been going on for the students I am leading. Currently the team is experiencing issues with attendance on the mechanical team and it is making the mechanical design and construction of the robot progress slower than usual. This is causing the controls team to have little to no work to do and limiting my usefulness on the coding front.

Questions to think about:

  1. Are all of the students involved?

The students that are attending the meetings are involved for the most part. I do see some kids sitting around waiting for work to do, and the controls kids are often sitting around doing nothing for the reasons mentioned above.

  1. What can I do to make sure all of the students are involved?

I could start giving the controls kids practice exercises to work on when they aren’t busy so that they might learn more from their experience on the team.

  1. How is the team progressing toward their goals?

The team is progressing very slowly toward their goals because of a lack of manpower. The competition is fast approaching and tensions are running a little high as the robot design isn’t finalized yet.

  1. What am I doing to help the team toward their goals?

I’m currently helping out any way I can to try and get the team back on track but unfortunately, I do not have much mechanical background so I can’t be super helpful.

  1. What can I do to be a more effective leader? What ideas can I bring to the team to help them further their goals?

One of the things I have been thinking about is ways to help the team grow. Usually, we have a lot of people who come early in the year and then after a few weeks the number of people drops significantly. I’ve thought of surveying the people as to why they do or don’t come to the meetings to try and see how we can retain more people.