Robotics - Looking Back

For team 7727, the 2014-15 FTC robotics season (Cascade Effect) has ended. We didn't do all that well, and I would like to take a moment to consider why it was so.

First, we didn't have very many parts to start out with. It looked like we had a lot of inventory because there was so much junk in the mess that was everywhere, but the number of useful parts was quite low. We also didn't have (and never got) all the parts of the field, so we never had a complete game set on which to practice.

Speaking of the field, its construction was something of a disaster. It took way too long (almost two months to become complete-ish) and we made a lot of mistakes. Those could have been avoided had we read the instructions instead of, say, drilling holes through the kickstand pipes and riveting them to the inside of the center assembly when there were small pipes with pre-drilled holes for that purpose. Near the end, there was the whole debacle of the ramp; we never did get that fixed. (Tape for the win!)

Another serious problem was that people couldn't come to meetings. Most of the builders were at some sort of sports thing during a bunch of robotics practices and some people skipped some meetings. I probably had the best attendance record of anybody, but I can only program and it takes more than code to make a robot. (I did compose and compile the entire engineering notebook, though.)

Returning to the problem with the lack of parts, we waited way too long to get critical pieces. This was not helped by the school administration busting into the robotics program this year; they required purchase orders before we could get stuff with our budget. These took days to process. The linear bearings we needed for the lift - a super important part of the robot - were 3D-printed, but it took almost a month from when we started needing them to when we got them. The AEA's printer turned out to be a waste of time and distraction.

Speaking of school administration and bureaucracy, the team rosters got all shuffled around a month or so into the season. Originally, they were chosen by a panel of teachers (who probably didn't know much about how the people interact or what their skills are) to make roughly equal teams. The coach reshuffled them to form a veteran team - my team - and a newbie team. This turned out to be a nice arrangement, but it really messed up our plans/relationships/expectations for a while after it happened.

With the lack of builders present at meetings, the robot was constructed very slowly. We had barely any time to test-drive it, let alone develop an autonomous routine. The lack of drive testing caused us to have unexpected problems - like breaking apart and/or getting stuck - during competitions. Though I had written some autonomous routines, our questionably-constructed field made them act differently at home than at meets. Of course, they weren't tested much in the first place because the robot was almost always on the build table being tinkered with, apparently inefficiently.

Maybe we'll do better next year. The coach said he would make a lot of changes. I hope those changes don't involve more bureaucracy or "team meetings", because those will do more to create problems rather than solving them.