We are rounding the corner to competition with only two full weeks left. Kraken is still under repairs and many issues were caught this week. We were able to drive the proximal and distal arms, proving the concept. The intake system was also assembled and is operable with a linear rail system.
The robot looks complete but is far from done with programming and electronics. In the next few weeks the programmers will be busy with tasks of making the arms move smoothly.

    Throughout this week of build season we were able to make great progress on the building of Kraken, such as attaching the gearboxes as well as the arms. Now the arms can rotate around the base axle, extending to the top Node.
    Programming has established tracking of game pieces with cameras, and the robot can identify its position anywhere on the field with vision of at least one April Tag.
    Kraken CAD has been completed with final decisions made on the gripper. The CNC team has been very busy with the routing and milling of Kraken and Cthulhu pieces.

    Now there are 5 full weeks until our first competition at CVR. This week we made some changes
to the crossbars already on the robot. We have focused on milling the gearboxes to make the arms move this week.
To the left is the CNC team routing the gearboxes.

    With 6 weeks until our first competition our team has finished prototyping and made enough decisions to start CADing Beta bot (Kraken).
    CNC team worked on making the pieces from CAD, such as the cross bars and arms. The mechanical team began the construction of Kraken’s chassis, with crossbars from CNC.
    Programming incorporated their auto balancing into an auto path sequence. Additionally, Squid has been used to train new drivers for competition.

     We have a total of 7 weeks before our first competition, and have spent the second week continuing to discuss, design, and prototype for the robot. We have built more advanced prototypes out of metal and polycarbonate.
     Programming has been able to detect our position in the field using April Tags that resemble QR codes posted around the field. They have also managed to autonomously balance the robot on the charge station.

     The CAD team is working on making Beta Bot. CAD continued to work on designing elevators, and we made a choice on the elevator to proceed with.
     On Saturday we attended a design meeting hosted by Plus Ultra Robotics (7413) in Monterey, where we met with local teams 7777, 6884, 4255 and 4171. We had a great time meeting new teams and seeing other teams designs.

     We have a total of eight weeks between kickoff and our first competition, and we have spent the first week discussing, designing, and prototyping ideas for their 2023 robot. This is a hands-on activity for all of us, where we build wooden mock-ups for the design teams. Below is a prototype of an intake mechanism we are considering.

    We have successfully assembled and wired our swerve drive chassis which is now in the hands of our programming team. Swerve drive allows the robot to drive in any direction at any moment, making for a very quick and maneuverable robot. We have dubbed our base driving robot, “Squid.”
    The CAD team is working on multiple elevator designs for placing the cones and cubes. They have also refined the intake ideas in Fusion 360. In addition, volunteers and mentors are nearly done constructing replica field elements for testing our prototypes and robots.