We hosted a virtual Engineering Review Night and invited our engineering mentors. During the meeting, we explained our robot’s designs through CAD and asked for their input and suggestions.

On the Zoom meeting we presented and explained each of the subsystems of our robot to the engineers. We also showed videos and images of the prototypes we have made so far and described how they were tested with the outcomes.

After presenting our robot to the engineers we asked them what suggestions or comments they had. One of our major concerns was the structural integrity of the odometry pod pivot points so it was suggested that we look into flexures. They are layered sheet metal components that are flexible in one direction and extremely rigid in the other. The engineers also told us that we could calculate the moment of inertia of our supports and determine what changes will make our drivetrain stronger. It was recommended that we calculate our robot’s center of gravity by placing the weights of parts on an x, y graph and using the moment of inertia and torque calculations. Mark, one of the engineers we invited from Minnesota Measuring Engineers, even offered to look at our calculations after we did them to make sure they were accurate. The engineers strongly suggested we do a risk analysis to identify where we were struggling and focus on those issues. We are implementing it to make our work more efficient. Finally, Mark recommended we check out a book called Fundamentals of Machine Component Design. It is an engineering textbook used in college, and it covers many of the topics and challenges we are dealing with right now. During the engineering review night, we received a lot of helpful feedback from the engineers and we will definitely continue to reach out to them.

We demoed our robot at the Benton County Fair for two days in a row to reach out to the community. As well as letting people drive our robot, our team also demoed two controllable FLL robots. We also talked with the FRC team and other FTC teams at the event and learned about their robots.

We went to three Y-Care facilities in our local school district to give a demonstration of our robot to the kids there. We introduced ourselves to each of the small groups of kids and told them about FIRST and youth robotics. Then we let the kids drive our robot from last year and play with the LEGO SPIKE bots. We gave the kids robot driver’s licenses after they finished driving our robot. We also showed them some of the inner workings and what it can do. It was very exciting to see the kids having fun and being interested in robotics and FIRST.

Our team showed off our robot to Mr. Vinitsky as well as how we have used modeling this year. Mr. Vinitsky then explained the basics of machine vision and how computer recognition is much more difficult than human recognition. The last thing he told us is how to get a more accurate model for machine learning through a 3 step process. We have used modeling to detect the ring stack at the beginning of autonomous and we are working on custom models for aiming at the goals. We also mentioned volunteering and how the tournaments are completely run by volunteers and he seemed really interested.

Members of our team met with a rookie FTC team, #18119 Mostly Operational, over a Zoom call. We gave them tips on different subjects they were curious about as well as some information we have learned over the years such as how to be organized and how to handle judging. Even though they were all the way in Oregon we were able to connect with them online. It was fun mentoring a rookie FTC team and we liked being able to help out people looking for advice!

Our team was invited to sell concessions at an FLL tournament in Chippewa Middle School so we could raise money for our team. We had 2 concession locations at the event, the “dollar store” and the main concessions. The dollar store was located at a table next to the performance area and had cheaper food items. The main concessions in the school cafeteria had all the lunch items and other cheaper items as well. We had fun selling concessions at the tournament and learned about things such as inventory, cost analysis, working with vendors to order food and staffing based on rush periods.  It was a great way to earn money while learning skills we can use again at other events.