Day 1: Kickoff

On January 3rd, Cyber Blue attended the kickoff broadcast through NASA at IUPUI.

Day 2: The Rules

The day after kickoff, the team met and discussed all the rules. For any questions, we first consulted the manual. If we couldn't find an answer, we set aside the question for the FIRST Q and A.

Day 3: Strategy

After we fully understood the rules and limitations, we sat down and brainstormed strategies. These strategies applied mostly to how we would play the game and not robot functions or designs. Once we looked over all the possible ways we could attack this game, we chose what we wanted to focus on. We wanted to be able to load from either the floor or the payload specialist and be able to score.

Day 4: Robot Ideas

The next step towards reaching a final design decision was to come up with some basic robot ideas based around our chosen strategy. Collection method for the balls included using hooks, conveyor systems, Velcro, scoops, or the human player. For scoring, our ideas were a shooter system, or a dump system, basically. We then further developed our favorite ideas. We ended up opting for the total conveyor system robot and began making the final design.

Strategies Discussed:

Autonomous:

• Drive Away
• Find another robot/trailer and score balls
• Drive in circles
• Position to collect from payload specialists
• Find another robot/hold
• Block/defense

Tele-operated:

• Score in opponent trailer
• Herd to airlocks
• Gather empty cells and transport to fueling station
• Block airlocks
• Push opponent to our payload specialist/pin
• Keep trailer moving
• Trade empty cell for super cell
• Put moon rocks in our own trailer
• Collect rocks into robot and then dump into trailer
• Defend other goals
• Load robot "hopper"
• Take rocks out of play/limit scoring

Scoring Methods:

• Basket/dump
• Shooter
• Ramp/roller

Intake Methods:

• Conveyor
• Brushes
• Vacuum
• Scoop
• Human loaded

2 Ideas:

Good>

• Pick Up
• More excess room
• Unique
• Ball Pick Up

Bad

• Center of Gravity
• Raises whole system before being able to score
• New
• More/heavy to lift

Risks

• Floor pick up fails
• Ball capture fails
• Lift breaks

Summary:

Idea 1 was a conveyor that emptied into a small hopper. This entire system would raise up via a pulley system and then the conveyors would reverse and spit out the orbit balls.