Technicbots Meeting #20 – 2/4/17

Italics means action items not done last week.
Strike through means items that will not be checked this week, but will be checked in the future.
Check availability for the meeting (2/4): All except Brandon, Samuel and Justin

Agenda (7:00pm):

Action Items

Non-essential Technical item status updates:
-PTC Windchill post status (Justin)
-Engineer connection update (Samuel)
-Outreach/team connection (Samuel)

Championship preparation:
-ESD (Evan to continue research and report findings)
-Test Vuforia SDK(Samuel)

Engineering notebook:
-Write in lessons learned for hardware and software (Patrick and Brandon)

CAD
-Build solid model in system envelope (Abhishek)
-Simulate movement (graphing and values)(exercise 3) (Justin)
-Center of gravity on an incline (Jerry)
-Driving on field for autonomous (Justin)

Hardware improvements
-3d support print (ask brandon)
-Styrofoam phone holder (reduces vibration and effects of ESD)
-Make sturdier shooter
-Replace potential shooters
-Consider lighter linear lift
-Switch wheel orientation
-Faster chassis (with faster turns)

Software improvements
-Add “backup” autonomous opmodes where we don’t go for the beacons
-Tune the autonomous so we can get both beacons 100% of the time
-Implement Vuforia/OpenCV(Which Technical Difficulties uses) for the beacons
-Write extra safety code if possible to prevent robot usb disconnects
-Update control award sheet with improvements

From email, this is long:

A. Tournament logistics (HongWei):
(1) confirm team members availability for the tournament and arrange transportation (Team Rule: all team members should go together so we don’t need to track down individuals except for special circumference and approved by coach), count me for cart transportation and Patrick’s Dad for robot transportation. Both of us normally can only take one more passenger (Younger team members: please indicate your availability in the team google sheet on the tournament availability tab)
(2) confirm Breakfast arrangement with team (before we start from my home)
(3) confirm lunch arrangement with team (confirm the lunch hour slot with tournament host once we arrive at the tournament)
(4) confirm Parent Photographer for the tournament: (Elaine will do most local tournaments but we may need other parents for out of town tournaments) The goal is to record every match in the tournament. Multimedia team (Justin/Evan): please recommend what is the best way for storing the sharing these videos
(5) confirm dinner arrangement (flexible enough so we can sit down fast. Last night, we had to wait more than 1 hour to get in and Saturday night most restaurants do not take reservation during peak dinner time. Some suggestions, such as Dickeys, cafeteria style and large dinning space for accommodating large groups, we will start looking at 15+ group)

B. Pit Design (Amanda):
(1) We need a serious design to make the pit attractive and clutter free: poster board vs large screen monitor? What to display?
(2) I will purchase navy blue Tent from Amazon (Coach)
(3) Feather flag is ready and we already used in yesterday’s tournament: it looks good
(4) Any other decorations?
(5) Give away items: I think we should give away something useful (buttons, wrist bands do not seem much useful)
Here are some ideas for you to explore and please bring your recommendations and cost estimate in the next meeting.
The White Barrel Stick Pen- G
https://www.zazzle.com/create_your_own_post_it_notes-256433264513112918
(6) Candy machine on display in pit for visitors: Austin, please update me with the plan
(7) For local tournaments (when pit setup time is tight), need only 2 builders and 2 programmers in the pit for the first 5-10 minutes to reduce clutter and confusion while setting up
(8) Bring some colored markers/sharpies to mark match schedule and scouting sheets (put them into pack list)

C. Scouting (Amanda): We have the following scouting process improvements identified based on yesterday’s experience
(1) Team scouting form: we need about 10 extra empty form that we can use to fill in the teams which we are interested at. With 24-36 team tournament, 10 is probably a good number. The criteria for selecting these 10 teams will change from season to season and from time to time based on our robot’s capabilities. Right now, here is the current criteria and these are the details we need to confirm with the teams during scouting:
A team must have – position 2 autonomous (preferably shooting and double park) , shooting in teleop, and fast/efficient beacons
(2) WHEN FILLING IN THE SCOUTING SHEET – only fill in the data with check marks and non zero numbers – we want to use as less ink on the paper as possible to be able to decipher it easily (no zeros or crosses)
(3) Once the schedule is out, set aside all of our partner teams scouting entries and ordered in order of matches chronologically
(4) Update ranking system to put weight for the features in the above criteria so those teams will rank relatively higher in our system
(5) Print picture of field with the robot orientation in autonomous and where we want the cap ball to be pushed in endgame for easy access (To facilitate the explanation to other teams in scouting and by driver coach)
(6) Team flyer is still useful during scouting and can be reduced to 1/3 of page by using the brochure format with three identical columns (I have paper cutter to cut them) Jerry to use brochure format to design new robot flyer
(7) Match scouting form: we should prepare two ink color pens (red/blue) for filling in the form so we can quickly identify the red/blue alliance for the match (add to pack list), also remove points in the form which is distracting
(8) Ranking system: we found some discrepancy between our performance ranking system and qualification match ranking. The teams ranked high in qualification matches do not rank high in our system because our system didn’t take into account the opponent’s performance. Rank2 team yesterday can only do the beacons but had a better luck with all weak opponents. So they rank low in our system and proved too that they were eliminated during semifinals. I added a column to record the team’s ranking in qualification matches for cross reference. To reduce work load, we can fill that in after round 4 and can do it for top 10-15 teams only. Also after round 4, for the top 10 teams, we need to go back to the details of matching scouting form to confirm we didn’t miss any capability in the ranking system as those will be our decision points on analyzing the strength of the teams
(9) We identified the above improvements to help us get to a shorter summary list quickly. There is only a short time between the end of qualification matches and alliance selection. We need to make decision quickly and communicate with other teams. As a scouting lead, you leave the details for the scouting team members to collect but need to design a process for you to collect the information efficiently to provide a summary for team to make final decision in a very short time. Please think about any other ideas which can help in this regard. Please update related scouting doc and sheet as identified above with strategy/guideline updated too.

D. Presentation (Coach):
(1) We will have a full team at 2/11 team meeting. All younger team members are required to join 2/11 team meeting 7-9pm to hear the rehearsal of the presentation. Evan will present ESD info and recommend what we can do to mitigate ESD (both material and procedure)
(2) We have achieved many things in the past year but the way we are conveying this information makes it seem insignificant. To better convey the importance we need more emphasis and practice on how we say these outreach portions. We also need to explain our thinking process from conceptual to concrete. We want to have something from our presentation that makes us standout from the other teams to better stick in the judges minds.
(3) ALL: think about adding another slide for your portion of speech in the presentation. Add them in before the next meeting so we can go through the iterations to make them better before championship tournament.

E. In Game (Abhishek/Evan):
(1) Driver coach has to check that the ref puts in enough balls as in accordance with the beacons scored
(2) We also have to contest any unfair calls – this is only possible by the driver coach when reviewing scores (have to be careful as some referees do not take well to being questioned)
(3) On the spot decision has to be made by driver coach about whether or not to do high or cap the ball (depending on time and vortex location in reference to robot)
(4) Driver coach has to communicate with partner team for needs (cap ball moving, defense, or beacon scoring)
(5) Driver coach to give driver or drivers periodic one sentence summaries on in game developments (emphasize on the opponents)
(6) Summarize the above Driver coach responsibilities into Team google sheet, print out a copy and carry it along with the picture of the field from scouting team for all matches (Abhishek)
(7) Pit crew check procedure (Evan): so we don’t make the low level mistake of going on the match with non working motors

F. CAD (Justin)
(1) We need to start incorporating calculations in CAD. The judges are more questioning about what we are using cad to do to help make the actual robot rather than what we can simulate. We need more calculations than pretty videos.
(2) Center of gravity on an inclined plane (Jerry, document into Engineering notebook, one of the things the Judge was interested in)
(3) Build solid model in system envelope (Abhishek)
(4) Simulate movement (graphing and values)(following exercise 3) (Justin)
(5) Driving on field for autonomous (Justin)

G. Hardware (Patrick: Please reply to indicate which ones can be done this week):
(1) Change linear slide to slim and efficient 8020 to decrease robot weight and make tuning autonomous easier. Email Coach the link for purchase
(2) Change the shape of the outside of the robot to not get stuck on the cap ball in autonomous (Red alliance side)
(3) Make the cap ball passive mechanism out of material that cannot be bent easily (less malleable)
(4) Stronger more consistent sweeper (update the packlist specifically for the spare parts on sweeper, need a bunch of them)
(5) Place the wires in a way that reduces wire stress and ESD
(6) Slight improvement on beacon scorer (though most beacon miss was due to broken beacons)
(7) The chassis wheel hub grinding (need a washer or spacer of some sort to reduce damage on wheels and eliminate squeaking noise)
(8) Faster chassis with new big wheels
(9) Maybe tape top of the robot frame that touches the field upper metal border to prevent discharge during the game

H. Software (Brandon: Please reply to indicate which ones can be done this week):
(1) Tune blue autonomous (should be easier after weight redistribution)
(2) Create position 2 autonomous program for blue alliance (must have for championship)
(3) Program a button for backwards sweeper in teleop (Samuel)
(4) Make the passive cap ball mechanism release a double press on the remote to eradicate the accidental mechanism dropping (Samuel)
(5) DISABLE THE UPDATE feature on all phones for the rest of the year (we won’t be as lucky with a nice FTA in the future)
(6) Make sure pit crew is still reflective of the robot’s changes
(7) Find whats wrong with red autonomous navigation (5% chance of getting stuck at the first beacon then not advancing) do we have enough logging to study the log if it happens again? If it happened during practice, can’t just ignore it. Need to check the log to get down to the root cause
(8) Complete Vuforia navigation and understand more of the performance. so we can make a decision at the championship if we should switch to it or not (affecting chassis layout) (Samuel)

I. Engineering Notebook (Samuel):
(1) Austin to fill in the Engineering notebook with yesterday’s tournament pictures
(2) For F,G,H items as confirmed to be worked on during this week, details should be in the engineering notebook by next meeting. (Samuel to follow up)

Logistics
-Pit area design (Amanda)
-Mentoring teams update (Samuel)
-Team blog notification mechanism (Brandon) (long term)

Non-essential Technical item status updates
-Vuforia SDK (Samuel to try the program and report status)
-ESD (Evan to continue research and report findings)
-PTC Windchill post status (Justin)
-Engineer connection update (Samuel)

Engineering notebook (Samuel)
-Review entries for last meeting including Executive Summary (all content should be in by 7pm)
-Overall:
-Hardware section (coordinate to avoid overwriting) :
-Software section:
-CAD section:

Game rule updates (Abhishek) (updates should make into Engineering Notebook)

Robot Design discussion (discussion points should make into Engineering Notebook, these should be mostly finalized)
-Overall robot update (Patrick)
-Autonomous strategy (Patrick/Brandon)
-Teleop strategy (Patrick)
-Software improvements (Brandon/Samuel)

Championship preparation (2/25)
-In action items above

Misc
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In meeting Action items (9:00pm)
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Agenda (10:30pm):
Action items:

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Action items: