Robotics team works to refine design process

After the robotics team members have brainstormed and progressed to prototyping, the team uses computer-assisted drafting (CAD) to finalize their ideas and work out the finer details of the design.

The team devotes around the first four weeks of the season to designing its robot using a computer program called SolidWorks, which gives the team a competitive advantage.
“Using SolidWorks allows us to see problems before we spend a bunch of time building it,” senior Stanley Yip said. “That way we know our design is physically possible like whether or not a certain bolt is wedged in an inaccessible place.”

The robot is split up into six subsystems: drivetrain, ball pickup, shooter, bridge tipper, electronics and software, each of which is assigned to one subteam of five people.
“As designs are completed, we fabricate and assemble them,” junior Mihir Iyer said, “so some of the subsystems may be done before week four.”

Sometimes the team’s designs do not work as intended. In this case, they return “back to the drawing board and redesign our mechanism,” Iyer said.

Last year during the design process, the team found it difficult to keep the big picture in mind, according to Iyer.

“For example,” said Iyer, “our ball pickup mechanism was not as good as it could have been because we decided on a design and did not evaluate other possible solutions.”
This year the team is working to correct this issue.

“We have been focusing on keeping our options open for a longer period of time so others can think of ideas,” Yip said. “We don’t want to lock ourselves into a single idea early on that may not be the best because it would be silly to spend so much time making a below-average design into an average one instead of an average one into a great one.”