The first weekend in January is always a celebration for FIRST Robotics students! On Saturday January 7, FIRST Robotics teams all around the world saw the 2023 season game, “Charged Up! Presented by Haas”. FRC Team 1816, “The Green Machine”, is proud to be sponsored this season by the Gene Haas Foundation, and it was with a sense of anticipation that we joined with FRC 9157 Iconic Polars and FRC 7109 TechNoLogic for the kickoff release viewing and initial brainstorm.
This season’s challenge places two competing alliances on the field, to bring cubes and cones, representing energy resources, to their respective community. Each alliance robot will retrieve game pieces from substations, and score those pieces by placement into the alliance’s grid. In the final moments of each match, alliance robots will race to dock with their Charge station. The charge station requires up to three robots to climb a ramp and balance on a teeter-totter platform. Squeezing three robots onto the platform will be hard, but not impossible! See the game animation here: 2023 FIRST Robotics Competition CHARGED UP presented by Haas Game Animation
After watching the release video and tours of the competition field, we got to work, reading the game manual in groups. We evaluated all potential ways to score points as well as noting the important rules regarding robot size, operation, and rules of the game itself.
With this information in mind, we began brainstorming the best and most effective strategies for the autonomous, driver control (teleop), and endgame periods of the game.
Some of these strategies included scoring with both game pieces or only focusing on one, as well as whether it would be better to score a preloaded element or engage (park and balance) on the dock, or could we do both? To finish off the first day, we talked about the various design mentalities of different kinds of teams—elite, mid-level, and rookie teams. This discussion was all about how a team’s resources factor into the final design and what is realistic and reasonable for our team to shoot for.
The second day of kickoff we started out with a quiz on the game manual’s contents, focusing on important rules and this year’s field setup. Afterwards we began to brainstorm different designs to pick up the game pieces. A software and coding rookie, Elena says, “I liked how we had both small group discussions and then brought those ideas to the whole team— that way we could get multiple perspectives”. The most popular designs turned out to be a compliant gripper, a vacuum, and a mechanism that can straighten out cones and a post (or prong) design. It was truly another amazing kickoff and Team 1816 is “energized” for the new season! – Nora B.