unearthed robot design

SQUIDWARD

We named our robot "Squidward" after the SpongeBob character, because we bought him during the SUBMERGED season. We used a robot base we found on YouTube, which we liked because it's small, and has 2 spots for attachments to hook into the motors.

Dozer

We use a dozer attachment on some missions for smashing or pushing. It goes up and down with one fo the motors.

The dozer also helps with the weight balance of our robot, because the forklift is heavy.

Forklift

We use the forklift on most missions, because we built it so that an attachment can be added to it with pegs. This allows us to approach a mission at any height, and to use the forklift as an active or a passive attachment.

purpose-built attachments

Hank

Missions 9 and 10

James

Mission 8

Ben W.

Mission 9 and10

Grey

Mission 5 and 6

Isaac

Mission 3

Henry

Mission 1 and 2

Ben D.

Mission 12

Max

Mission 11

MISSION EFFICIENCY

We set a goal this year to get 300 points, because we felt like we needed at least that many points to advance to an international competition. To accomplish that goal in 2.5 minutes, we knew our missions needed to be as efficient as possible.

Relay Style: It's important to our team that every one of us writes and starts a program. We've done this since our first year, and it means we all contribute and share in the team's success. To us, this is part of our Teamwork, Inclusion, and Innovation. We all want to be a part, so sometimes we have to work a little harder to make that happen.
Minimize Transition Time: Starting 8 different programs means the handoff from one program to the next has to be SUPER QUICK. We work on this over and over again so we get really fast, and we change our programs to set them up for the next mission.
Multiple Missions in a Program: We knew we would have to solve multiple missions in a program to get to our 300 point goal. We planned this in when we were designing our robot routes, looking for ways we can do multiple missions with the same attachment, or without going back to the home area. In some cases it's faster and safer to go back to home in between. We did our best to make everything as fast as possible.
Speed Up the Motors: When we have our programs working, we speed up the motors as much as we can without messing it up. Every second we can squeeze out is an opportunity for more points.

We tracked our progress on a chart in our Robozo Lair

Robot reliability and the 6/7 test

We have struggled in the past with our scores varying a lot between robot runs. This year we decided we needed to have at least 80% success before we could call a program "finished" if we wanted to feel confident that we could achieve our 300 point goal at a competition. We needed a way to test that, and that's how we came up with the 6/7 Test.

You do the 6/7 Test means when you think you're finished with your program and it's working well. You run your program 7 times in a row. If you get all the points 6 times, you pass. If not, it's back to the drawing board! And 6/7 is actually 85% reliability, so we like that even better!

the results

Our best score so far at a competition is 290 points. Our best score at practice is 310 points. Our maximum achievable score is 340 points. We're still working hard to get there!

We'll see what happens at the Western Edge!

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