This week was a lot of mechanical assembly, and we finally have a semi-final iteration of our robot put together.

Paly Robotics scrimmage

On Sunday, we went to a scrimmage hosted by Team 8 Paly Robotics.

There were a few mechanical issues, so we weren’t able to play in any matches, but this upcoming week is going to focused on smoothing everything out and then focusing on programming.

Primarily, we want to get the shooting and intaking routines working well, and then integrate them with path following into autonomous modes. Secondarily, we also have to move electrical components around to minimize the amount of wires crossing over that we currently have.

Additionally, we are going to be playing around with using a more iterative approach for the more complex subsystems and routines because of the restrictiveness of the command-based system. Ultimately, one of the most important things is being able to change and fix robot functionality quickly, and commands are good for that because they help abstract logic, but there is also a level of confusion originating from different commands being scheduled concurrently that can’t really be fully resolved even with the requirements scheme. However, altering and designing multiple complex auto routines is very easy to do with the command-based system, so there’s that to consider.