2023 Week 2: Build Journal

After a successful first week of planning and prototyping, the build team continued to test different intakes, cycling options, and game piece indexing mechanisms. Among the indexing designs we considered were the V-Intake, which used two bands in the shape of a V to pull cones to the middle of the robot, and the Bar Indexer, which uses a simple horizontal bar to right fallen cones.

However, after testing and evaluating these designs, the team ultimately scrapped the V-Intake and moved on to other ideas such as a claw-like intake, which used flexible arms with wheels to grab game elements, and the Suction intake, which used suction cups to stick onto cones. We also worked on an "Over the Bumper" intake, which used a shaft with wheels at cone height in front of the robot's bumper to pull cones in and over the bumper into the robot.

In addition to these intake designs, the team also focused on building and refining other aspects of the robot, such as the Spindexer, a mechanism to index the cone into a finite number of fixed locations inside the bot's frame perimete We also made progress on field elements and field set up. We hope to have prototyping done by the end of this week, so that we can break in Week 3 with a discussion of what our final design should be. Overall, it was a successful and productive week for the build team.