NEW FEATURES

At this competition, we changed our climber. The climber was unique compared to others as it had two long hooks at a slight angle and proved to be enough to latch onto the bar and climb. It worked smoothly and consistently.

We also added a new feature to our robot to help us hold on to the power cubes without dropping them. The shelf is a bent piece of polycarb that attaches to our intake with a hinge. This was an amazing and game changing addition to CATWOMAN because the robot did not drop cubes when we were trying to lift the cubes up.

COMPETITION MATCHES

During qualifications, a robot fell on us during a climb, bending one of our drivetrain's frame rails, leading to a frantic attempt to find a way to repair the rail before our next match. We ended up snapping the rail with a metal bar and had to use gussets and a support bar to brace and hold together the new “joint”.

In autonomous mode, our robot is programmed to detect the colors of the scale and the switch so our robot picks the correct autonomous mode. For instance, if the switch is blue on the right and we are on the blue alliance our robot will drive and align itself to put two cubes on the blue switch.

During alliance selection for eliminations, we were picked by the #1 seed Team 125. Together we utilized scouting data to select our 3rd alliance partner Team 4311 the Swampscott Currents. Throughout the playoffs, autonomous modes worked very well and were able to control both the switch and scale at the start of the match, gaining us some very valuable points. For most matches, the strategy was to have 125 control the scale while 4311 to control our switch and fill the vault. We controlled the opponent’s switch and played defense.