TITANS 17576

Nov / Dec 2020

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TITANS 17576

Viewing our scores from

our first two league meets
of the 2020-2021 season,
our team is proud to an-
nounce that we are current-
ly ranked 11th out of the 112
teams that are competing. Our
highest score was 190, and our
lowest was 68, which can defi-
nitely be improved in terms of
consistency for our next compe-
tition. Although finals are coming
up and our team members are bus-
ier than ever, we are working hard to
improve our robot for the next meet.

To learn more about our results,

feel free to visit https://ftc-events.
firstinspires.org/2020/team/17576.
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F
or the past few months, the programming subteam
has been focused on implementing concepts we
learned last season into our autonomous program for
the first league meet. We have been using a PID controller
with encoders to ensure accurate robot movements, and
with an IMU to ensure accurate turning. In addition, we
have implemented camera vision to detect the ring stack
using OpenCV, an open-source camera vision library. We
considered several methods of determining the number
of rings in the ring stack in the autonomous period. The
first option we considered was having the robot measure
the amount of orange detected from the webcam in the
area that the rings would be. This approach is what we
used for our first and second league meets, and it worked
in all of our matches. However, it was a pain to set up: the
webcam had to be aimed at the exact same place every
time and our current mounting system is very unstable.
For our third league meet, we have programmed the robot
to actively find where the rings are using contours, and
then determine the number of rings based on the height
of the stack. Our next steps are to learn about using dead-
wheel odometry for localization, motion profiling for ac-
celeration control, and splines for smooth movements.

The mechanical sub-team is currently working on making

changes for the Meet #2 robot. We worked on transition-
ing from their current meet 2 robot to their final robot.
The final robot has a new front shooter design that will
have a new improved transition, shooter, and intake sys-
tem. We have noticed from our previous robot that the
transfer of our robot needs to have a constant speed or
else the shooter will not shoot consistently. To fix this, our
new design utilizes a servo to constantly push rings into
a longer shooter, which gives more runoff time to reach
maximum velocity. For our third league meet, we plan
on using this new robot to consistently score essential
points like power shot. Our next steps are to optimize the
shooter guide to have better compression and build a new
wobble goal mechanism to easily grab the wobble goal.

Last but definitely not least, the PR team has been working
hard to bring you this wonderful newsletter, as well as updat-
ing our website, branding, and getting funds. We have also
been working on some epic t-shirt designs for future merch.
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A CAD render of our robot.

A CAD of our robot.

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We would like to thank our sponsors who made this possible.

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Illinois Math & Science Academy

1500 Sullivan Rd.
Aurora, IL 60506

email | titansftc@imsa.edu