Today was my first day at Shenandoah High School. School went by quickly enough, and I was able to get on with robotics. We spent another entire meeting researching and discussing design, we are several days behind schedule now. While this does not sound "good," at the some time it is to be, to a point, expected. If we are able to get through and finish the big picture design tomorrow so that we may come back Thursday and hit the ground building, I believe we will be in good shape. We talked about different types of ball collection devices, ball launching devices, and we dabbled for moments here and there in different possibilities for the drive train. My opinion with the 4"x6" rectangular-profile obstacle running across the middle of the field, treads may be our best option. In the 3 regional competitions I've been to, I don't remember seeing any group of 5 or 6 winning teams in which there were not at least a pair of treaded 'bots. It provides incredibly effective traction, mobility, and in the case of the obstacle in this years game protects any components mounted to the underside of the robot. For my homework tonight I did a couple of sketches. I sketched the parts needed in a semi-fantastical idea I had to create OmniTreads: tank treads with the holonomic aspect of omniwheels (not mecanum wheels). I also diagrammed a few key points regarding a collector consisting of a 2" spinning "roller' with sticky, compliant foam wrapped around to suck in any basketballs that are unfortunate enough to come it contact with said device.
The closest things to decisions we made today were eliminating about 95% of the possibilities for different types of collectors, elevators (a mechanism to bring the ball from ground level where the collector is up high to the launcher), and launchers. Tomorrow we still have to finalize decisions regarding those, as well as discuss our drive train.
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