Lindsay+Harwood's+reflection

Walking into the competition was an experience in itself. There was a tremendous amount of energy in the room and it was obvious that all of the students and mentors were passionate about the event. It was impressive to me that the different teams were so willing to help each other, which usually is not the case in many other kinds of competitions. Experiencing the different people that were there was valuable to me because of the vast range of different ideas and approaches. The alliances between the teams were interesting because they required that each team channel some of their focus on what another team worked so hard on to create. I didn’t realize how significant the event was to the students of the area and the state as a whole. Hearing the governor speak so highly of the event as well as seeing the reporters that showed up made me realize what a great opportunity it was for me to attend and be such an active part in the competition. It was definitely a scientific, mathematical atmosphere which is different than what I am normally used to. Changing up my mode of thinking for one day was refreshing as well as challenging, however I know that the other teams faced the same challenges as we did. I also enjoyed the total hunks that matriculated at the First Tech Challenge. Some real potential.

I think the best part of having family and friends watch was knowing that they were going to get to experience first hand what exactly our class is all about. For months I have been sharing with my family and friends information about the robotics class, but I think that it’s hard to understand or visualize exactly what it was that we spent so much time on. I was extremely proud to be able to point out a robot to my family that was functioning (for the most part) beautifully and shooting balls into the 5 point goal! My grandmother told me that she was truly impressed with all of the work that we put in and that she would have never been able to do anything like it. She also said that she thinks it is great that Lincoln has a program dedicated to teaching girls how to build and program, because there are not many other schools that are able to offer this type of class.

Overall, I was really impressed with the engineering on our robot. I noticed that our robot was more compact than other bots, but more or less just as effective. I was particularly impressed with our rotating zip tie ball collector. Aside from the programming glitch that we dealt with for a few days, the collector effectively and quickly picked up balls at the competition after we fixed the statement in Robot C. Not only did the collector work extremely well, but the gear on the side of the robot added to the aesthetics of the chassis. The skeleton chassis also functioned nicely, and the wheels were stable, balanced, and agile. While the ball shooter was nicely and carefully built, it was sporadic in actually serving its purpose and scoring the balls into the goals. More work needed to be done to figure out where exactly the ball needed to be positioned between the wheels in order to really propel it. On the same note, the efficiency of the ball hopper needed improvement. We were able to collect a solid number of balls, however only one of two of them would actually successfully shoot into the goal. In terms of actual programming, we definitely could have spent more time figuring out how to create a more useful and detailed autonomous period, but I thought the programming regarding the joy sticks was really great. Overall, I would say that there were more positives than negatives regarding the engineering of the robot.

For next year, I think that a practical first tip would be to get started on the robot for the competition a little bit sooner. We dealt with some serious time crunches which added stress to the process and also possibly took away from more effective, but also more time consuming methods that could have been used. I also wish that we had spent more time on programming the bot and making sure that everything was written correctly. This would have allowed more time to physically move the bot around before throwing it into the middle of a competition! Using the joysticks definitely takes practice, which we could have used more of. Regardless, I still think Francis and Sydney did a very nice job. On a similar note, I think that having some sort of a mock field would definitely be beneficial. This would allow the members of the team to each be able to try controlling the bot, and it would also allow the team to figure out approximately where the robot needs to be at certain times which would be conducive to a successful competition. I also think that it would be helpful to explore more ball shooter options next year in terms of gear ratios, positioning of the wheels, etc. which would possibly allow for a more effective shooter than we had this year. Lastly, a good idea for next year would be to allow a mentor to come in and help a little bit earlier. Having the maintenance help us on the bot reduced the time we wasted on easy or unnecessary tasks. While it is important that the robot be the work of the students, a mentor who is familiar with tools and building can definitely save valuable time that can be used later in practicing, programming, etc.