Showing Mr. Bankers components of our robot

Our robot has eight motors running at once and because of this, we ran into power issues where the robot can disconnect or read encoders wrong when too much power is drawn. We met with Chris Bankers, an electrical engineer, to get ideas to reduce battery consumption. We looked at the subsystems that draw the most current under operation. He told us that when the robot draws too much power, the battery can’t sustain the voltage, causing it to drop, which can cause encoder misreads. He told us that motors draw a lot of power when initially turning or stuck in position. This causes enough power to be sucked from other components, causing a misread of the motor encoders. From what Chris told us, this led us to suspect our lift system being one of the main power consumers on the robot. So we will focus on the lift to try to mitigate the problem. Overall, it was nice talking to Mr. Bankers and we learned a lot of new ideas and reasons behind the power draw of our robot. We will use the new information we learned to solve the power draw issues on our robot.

Teaching Peter (Promet engineer) how to drive the robot while Jackie answers questions

We met with Peter Kadoulka and the engineers at Promet Optics to show them our robot and how much we’ve grown since our previous demo in 2019. The demo started with us giving an overview of the FTC program as well as what we do as a robotics team. We then showed the engineers this year’s game and what our robot can do. The engineers took turns driving our robot and we answered questions about the program such as how their kids can get involved, and many others. They took turns talking about their college experience and what they do at the company. Overall we had a lot of fun being able to see the company again and we look forward to seeing them at the State Championship.

Show AAE engineers our robot (left) and Sonny looking at our wires and giving us advice (right)

We met with Sonny Sinarath and his coworkers at Air Automation Engineering (AAE) to show them our robot. After our demo, we talked to Sonny about ways to improve our cable wiring as our grabber wires would get caught in parts of our lift. He approved of our wiring box design which AAE had helped inspire two years ago. Sonny suggested we keep all the wires in one contained cable and pull it away from the lift where it could get tangled. He gave us some finger trap material, which covers and protects groups of wires, for our grabber wires. We have implemented a retractable wiring system that can pull the cable back because of Sonny’s suggestion.

Talking to someone who worked in the Omnitheater

We met Mark Dahlager, the Vice President of Museum Experiences, at a previous demo at the Science Museum of Minnesota with Wrench Dressing and he invited us to tour the Science Museum’s exhibit shop. First, we went to the office space where exhibit ideas are discussed and designed. We met with some engineers who helped with various parts of the museum such as the Omnitheater and temporary exhibits. We learned about how they come up with ideas for exhibits and how they develop and prototype their designs. Then, we went down to the shop where most of their manufacturing is done. We met with several engineers who used a CNC router, 3D printers, and soldering to create exhibit parts. Two of the engineers we talked to actually competed on FRC teams in the past which was really cool to learn. Overall, it was really fun to see how exhibits are created at the Science Museum and how different engineers ended up working there!

Showing Dr. Julie our shell prototype 

We met with Dr. Juile Hui to show her our robot CAD. We walked her through this year’s season and the objectives our robot was built around. She liked what we had so far and gave us tips to enhance the design like stripes. It was suggested that we look to automobiles for design inspiration. It was interesting to learn about Julie’s career path, her studies, and how she’s an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. With the help of Julie, we learned about different places to get design inspiration from as well as design tips.