SEASONS

Post Kickoff

After kickoff, we made a priority list of what we wanted to achieve for the season. Initially, our most important goals were:

Although we were set on these objectives, our attendance at the FNC District Wake County Event in Week 1 and FNC District Asheville County Event in Week 2 has definitely complicated things. This season, we have less time than we are used to for the season before the FNC State Championship. As a result, we had to give up some of our aspirations, deciding that L3 climb is best left for States in Week 6 if we qualify.

Going under the trench/ over the bump

Holding 24 game pieces

Climbing to L1 in auto and L3 in endgame

Shooting against the hub and at set points within 15 feet

Passing from the neutral zone

Work In Progress:

We also used SysID (System Identification) to generate the PID and feedforward constants. When we recorded our values, we generated two files: the RIO file and another file.

The RIO file did not work for SysID, only the other file. The other thing is that values can look wrong and be right. Our Kd was essentially 0, which is relatively normal, but we thought that there was something wrong with it. Again, SysID is only a starting point, but it has seemed to work very well for our driver.

Bump Test

One of the first things tested was the robot going over the bump. We wanted to know how much time we would lose going over the bump, as this would help us decide if we were going to build something that fit under the trench.

To summarize the results of the above testing, it’s clear that going over the bump lost a lot of time if there were balls on the other side, and we still had issues with getting beached. Even with only a couple of balls, we were losing over a second going over the bump. Consequently, going under the trench was absolutely necessary. With that, we knew that we wouldn’t be able to make something like the Penn State climb to reach L3 in the future.

Shooter

We were originally hesitant to use a hooded shooter design. However, after running some tests, we couldn’t shoot at the base of the hub even with the shooter at a 30° angle. We didn’t want to make the angle any steeper, because it would make passing extremely difficult. So, we switched to a hooded shooter design as it would allow us to modify the angle.

Programming:

We used the CTRE Swerve Generator in Phoenix Tuner X for our swerve drive code. It is a simple process that requires you to measure the wheel radius, front left to front right distance, and front left to back left distance. The first time we did it, we used the documentation from CTRE.