2017 Build Season Week 1 Update
Written by Elizabeth Fernandes ’20 and Sakshi Shrivastava ’20
The Janksters have been very busy this first week. They came together as a team to work on strategizing for the game and then split into subgroups to work on prototyping for the robot.
The Programming Committee is downloading, installing and updating various softwares, such as Eclipse, C++ toolchains, development plug-ins and CAN Talon SRX, in preparation for fervent coding as more progress is made on the robot. They edited Eclipse preferences, coded Talons, and are ready to test out their code on a circuit board. After creating GitHub accounts, the programming committee downloaded Team 1967 code from previous years, transferred it from a laptop to Eclipse, and tested out their code to ensure that it ran smoothly.
The Electronics Committee aims for better accessibility, better wire organization, and the use of more sensors. So far, in conjunction with the Mechanical Committee, they have collaborated on their spacing constraints. They will soon plan out the electronics board and figure out where to place all the necessary components.
The Mechanical Committee has taken on the daunting task of finishing the entire robot by Week 4, or at most the beginning of Week 5. They hope to have overall clear communication among their large committee and numerous subgroups.
The subgroup of Mechanical that is currently focusing on climbing the rope has worked on a great deal of prototyping, a phase they are still in. Their next steps will be to consolidate all of their ideas into one functioning mechanism that they can work on in CAD.
So far, the fuel subgroup of Mechanical has worked on a CAD model that enabled them to see how much space they would need and calculate the angle of the ramp. They now have a much better feel for how high they would need to shoot the fuel, which in turn gives them an idea as to how many rollers they would need for their mechanism.
The subgroup working on the chassis has been busy brainstorming and prototyping their goals and how to reach them, in particular their deadline of January 21 for the completion of the chassis. They are discussing criteria for the structure of the chassis and are making final decisions, including the type and number of wheels, the method of transmission for controlling the robot, and locations of components. Part of their process is creating diagrams to visualize the dimensions of the components that are going into the chassis.
The Business Committee spent the majority of the first week collaborating with the other groups on strategy, brainstorming, and prototyping mechanisms. Now, towards the end, they have met up in their individual committee to work on designing themes and motifs for shirts, buttons, and standards while researching Jankster Swag.
Don’t forget to check our our Week 1 recap video on our Youtube channel here: https://youtu.be/XRVDw7VOwzA