2227 Competes at the Northern Lights Regional (and Season Update) 3/16/24

First off, thank you sponsors for your generous support of our team! We really appreciate your continued support for the Tigers and wanted to take a moment to update on what we’ve been up to this season.

After learning this year’s challenge, we started off the season figuring out the priorities of our robot using elements of Design For Six Sigma (DFSS). We weren’t able to achieve all of the game’s scoring methods for the robot, but due to our design process, we were able to consider what was lower priority.

We had a larger build team this year, which allowed for easier assembly of the robot once we fabricated the required pieces. Thankfully there weren’t many mishaps during construction. Build speed picked up closer to when we were going to the Northern Lights Regional, which allowed us us to have time to practice driving before the competition.

The code team was led through the efforts of one dedicated student, though other students took an interest and helped from time to time, allowing us to get the code we needed done. This is our first year with swerve drive, which was a complicated system. We did not have any preexisting code to use as a base which led to issues, such as initial lack of an electrical output limiter, and had to be added at competition. 

Our robot uses motors and chains to move our intake system, which has an arm and a wrist. The wrist moves to score in multiple spots, pick up notes, and feed notes into the note launcher. Our note launcher is fed by our intake system, and uses motors and wheels spinning at high speeds to launch the notes to score. Our climber system has two hooks that move with motors and ropes to lift our robot onto the chain. We got a lot of things done on our robot, and are proud of what we managed to do. We think that we did fairly well on robot construction, it turned out meeting our design goals.

The competition consists of robots competing in teams of three to outscore their opponents in each match. Winning matches and completing specific tasks during the match give ranking points allowing teams to continue through the group and place them favorably for the elimination portion of the tournament. There are multiple ways to score points, like launching orange rings (“notes”), into a high up area (The “speaker”). You can also put notes into a lower, vertical, opening (“amp”) that scores points and can increase the points of the speaker. At the end of a game, you can have your robot climb up on a chain (“Onstage”), and put notes into a trapdoor (“Trap”) for extra points.

First day – Load In:

When we got to Duluth, we started off with setting up our pit area. We had our pit built for repairs on our robot, for teams to know who we are, for giving out our pins, and for robot repairs. We had some of us setting up in our pit and others getting set up in their rooms. We were also getting ready for the start of practice matches.

Second day – Practice:

Thursday was our first full day at the competition, and we spent it participating in practice matches. This let our drive team get a feel for how the game played on a regulation field, as well as letting us see what fine tuning may have needed to be done before qualification matches began the next day. Some of our members also went to talk to other teams’ pits to learn about their robots and start networking.

Third day – Qualification Matches:

We began playing in qualification matches on Friday, and made it through six of our nine total matches for the competition. We won a couple of matches, but also lost some. On the bright side, we found areas on our robot that needed improvements, including our autonomous modes and our controls.

Fourth day – Qualifications end and Eliminations:

On our last day of the competition, we finished up with the rest of our matches. We had three matches left and ended up with one more win and two more losses. After we completed our matches, we unfortunately did not get picked for the elimination rounds, so packed up our pit and moved our equipment to our trailer. Then, we went back into the stands to watch the rest of the competition.

In the competition, most of our problems could be fixed right away. For some things, we had to work on them after the competition ended. A few of the challenging issues that had to overcome were things like our drive system, our controllers, and stress about performance. Later on, when the competition continued, we improved our uneasiness about performing on the field, and figuring out what the problem was in our drive system. We made solid plans and strategies to help our robot, and drive team, do well.

We worked closely with our mentors to double check that our controllers worked fine and were responding quickly and correctly to our robot, along with verifying the robot was receiving the correct driver station commands. We also tried reserving practice matches when possible, to test, and be ready for the match.

With many new members on the team, it had shown that we weren’t experienced and needed to improve our communication to work well with other teams. As we finished more matches, we started to understand how to work in the arena. Our strategies improved, and we found greater success in our matches.

We are most proud of our communication skills for scouting, judging, and strategy planning that we were able to develop at the competition. We are also proud that all of our team members were acting with gracious professionalism and how well we did with a new drive team. Even through all the challenges we faced while building our robot and the exhausting pace of competition, we all had fun while being professional. 

In the time we have between competitions, we plan to fix up the robot, improve our intake, and program more procedures for our robot to follow autonomously.

Our next competition is the Granite City Regional in Saint Cloud, MN from April 4th to April 7th. Our goals for this competition are to get the highest placement we can, while maintaining a positive impact on the culture of the competition. We would love to see you there!