Girl Power

What We Have Learned From Robotics

During the time we have had in robotics we have learned a lot about designing, building, and programming our robot. We were very active in the design process and we usually worked until it was late and dark outside. We started with a simple base, and worked from there. We learned that teamwork and communication was very essential, one person couldn't build the robot alone. 

A basic fork and elevator prototype.

So in order for us to build an efficient and high scoring robot we have to work together. Five heads are better than one! Like our team motto says: "It's not about winning.... It's about teamwork, commitment, and responsibility!" We also learned a lot about building. For example, you have to start with the foundation or the base of the robot. If you start building supports before the base, you will not be able to test the parts of the robot to make sure it's functional. Without a sturdy foundation your robot will fall apart. Also, it's very important to test everything. If something went wrong at the competition, it would be very challenging to fix it and get it to work. Finally, we learned a lot about programming, even though we aren't the main programmers. We can step into the programmers place if he can't make it to the competition. Rhea is our backup programmer and Rhea is learning to use Text Base ROBOTC. We can't use Graphical ROBOTC because our program was too complicated. It was too complicated because we used too many lines of code and too many variables. We also learned that if you use Text Base ROBOTC you need to check for spelling and punctuation. We also learned that when you are programming it would be very useful to add comments because you would be able to find where parts of your program. Comments also help some of the judges and even us understand the program.

In engineering, we have learned that failure is an option. We have failed many times during our time in robotics. 

Oh no! Allie's head fell off!

This has made our team stronger and pushed us to work harder. At our first competition, we found out that we didn't set up our field correctly, and our routines for skills were all backwards. We had to fix our program at the competition! We learned that we need to always make sure our field is set up correctly using the official field. We also had one match at the same competition where our axles popped out of the motors, and we didn't do so well during that match. We learned to always check our robot before each match. Also, at the Aloha VEX IQ Qualifier we had a match where we only scored three points! This was because our axles popped out of one of the motors and this same problem happened with our partners. We found out that we needed to change the motor and we needed to put a spacer in between the 2 by 28 brick we created and the collar. We needed to add a spacer in between because it would prevent the collar from rubbing against the 2 by 28 brick. Without the spacer, the collar would rub against the 2 by brick, and it made the axle pop out. We learned that mistakes will help you learn not to do it again and that would help you improve the design.

We have also learned about how teamwork and communication are two essential aspects of robotics. We need to work together to make our robot a very efficient robot. Teamwork is very important during a match because in order to score lots of points and balance you have to work together and that is where you need to start communicating with your partners. We also need to communicate to make sure that everyone knows what is going to happen for the day. For example, if we make a huge change to our robot, we need to tell our programmer because he needs to run his program and see what he needs to fix. We also need to tell Rhea to document what changes we made so that we can look back at the changes we made and we would be able to look back at what we changed if the changes weren't working for us. We have learned a lot about teamwork from our robotics experience. We now know that without teamwork and communication our team would fall apart. Nothing would get done! Teamwork and communication are two of the most vital parts of robotics.