Westside Robotics (FTC 4366, 6518, 19932, 21931) Progress Update

[Peyton-Yeung]

We've recently received out test hardware and are excited to get started.

So far we've
Unboxed everything
Flashed the OS onto SystemCore
Installed RHC2 onto SystemCore
Installed The alpha WPILib VSCode
Updated A301 firmware
Deployed some example code (pwm to a brushed motor controller via the SystemCore and A301 motion via MotionCore)
Installed and verified wireless connection to the Driver Station

We haven't dived too much into anything but we have have 2 chassis setups to test both the hybrid configuration and the MotionCore configurations in the coming weeks.

[Peyton-Yeung]

So we've been a bit busy with some other projects this summer and are getting back around to testing things now. @rzblue can speak more to the electrical and software sides right now as they've spent more time looking at this the past few weeks.

We did a bit of testing with the 2 chassis and had some seemingly mixed results.

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Test 1
Both Robots running 3" 80A stealth wheels and 3" omni wheels connected via belts. Only 1 motor on each side is connected. Both are geared to 500 rpm. The SystemCore robot is a little lighter so we supplemented some weight to make them equal.

Drag Race
The A301 chassis seemed a bit faster off the line but both seemed to get to the other side of the field at similar times.

Pushing
Both chassis seemed to hold ground against each other.

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Test 2
We were wondering if the wheels were not getting enough traction to show a difference so we swapped to grippier wheels. In both the drag race and the pushing runs, the A301 chassis seemed to not be running as smoothly as in the previous runs (no code was changed).
Both Robots running 3" 35A stealth wheels and 3" omni wheels connected via belts. Only 1 motor on each side is connected. Both are geared to 500 rpm. The SystemCore robot is a little lighter so we supplemented some weight to make them equal.

Drag Race
The A301 chassis seemed a clunky and while they arrive at similar times, the older NeveRest chassis touched first.

Pushing
Once again, the A301 chassis seemed like the wheels weren't spinning quite as well. The chassis did push back against the NeveRest chassis but seemed to be losing ground.

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Test 3
The last test of the night, we switch both chassis to 4" mecanum wheels running the same ratios. They both seemed to drive fine again,
Both Robots running 4" BB mecanum wheels. All 4 motors are connected now. Both are geared to 500 rpm. The SystemCore robot is a little lighter so we supplemented some weight to make them equal.

Drag Race
The NeveRest chassis touches the wall first but it's pretty close.

Pushing
Both chassis seemed to hold ground against each other just like in test 1.

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Some things to note:
It's been mentioned but the SystemCore is running pretty toasty.
The A301 were warm but not as much as SystemCore.
The A301 are very loud. The video shows a comparison of the existing FTC motors and an A301.

Next Steps
We're transitioning the hardware over to a new test robot as we are running a summer competition and need a few more robots to fill out the match schedule. We'll update more as we go but we are hoping to test a few things such as running 7 motors at the same time and positional control of 2 motors that need to mirror each other.

[Peyton-Yeung]

We had our end of summer robotics competition this past week and put the new control system through some paces for that.

The robot utilized (7) A301 motors with the goal of acquiring wiffle balls and placing them on the other side of a barrier.

Robot Run 1st Match 2nd Match

Specs
Drivetrain - X drive with 3" Omni wheels and (4) A301s with 500rpm cartridges
Lift - Linear slides with (2) A301a with 500 rpm cartridges in positional mode
Intake - Horizontal roller with (1) A301a with 500 rpm cartridge

The chassis was zippy with the 500rpm cartridge and 3" wheels. Overall, it felt very responsive and would likely be a good drivetrain ratio for a more experienced driver (but a little fast for a newcomer). We tested both robot centric and field centric control using the internal gyro. Both seemed to work well and the internal gyro did not seem to experience any significant drift over the course of a match.

The dual motor position control lift worked out nicely. We didn't have an issue getting it setup and they seemed to not be fighting each other running their own control loops. We did check by unplugging one of the motors while it was running and when we plugged it back in, the counts were no longer synced. This makes sense for relative mode and we likely could put in some additional code to cross check the relative values with the absolute values for error handling. We did have to splice two cables together to get one that was long enough to reach the intake when extended.

The intake packaging worked out very nicely as the spline shaft just passed through the whole motor and connected on the opposite side. This was way easier than other implementations but the 500 rpm ratio was a fair bit slower than we'd typically run in an application like this.

Finding a place to put the battery after the robot was assembled was tedious. It's very large and with the switch being on the side, it made it tricky to find a place to put it without covering something important. We elected to make sure the battery removal portion faced up so we could still put it out once mounted.

We're hoping to get a little more investigation done before the start of the season but their isn't a whole lot of time left and school starts back this week.