General Tips & Tricks

What to do during the first weeks

  • Read documentation on the wiki + drive
  • Read TDP’s of RTT, but also of other teams
  • Read Robocup rules
  • Do physical testing with the robots
    • This might especially be useful to improve the performance of kicking and chipping and see which components break easily

Advices

  • Keep in mind that you have to make everything for 15 robots
    • It should not take too much time to build each component
    • It should not be too expensive
    • It should be possible to manufacture components consistently. It should behave the same in all robots
  • If you have questions about how/why certain things were done, ask old team members and read documentation/wiki. It will save you lots of time.
  • Very general yearly planning:
    • 1st Module: figure out how the robots work; what are strengths and weaknesses of the robots; what do you want to work on this year.
    • 2nd Module: focus on the part(s) that you want to improve this year. Try to have a working prototype ready at the end of this module (you also want to be able to show something new during the design presentation which is somewhere during the second module, it was at the beginning of december for us so might be the same for you). Keep in mind that you should already look at companies that could potentially help you if you are not going to manufacture the components yourself.
    • 3rd Module: manufacture all new components and assemble all robots. Take into account that this will take more time than expected. Make sure you have some play to make changes to your design since it is very likely that it won’t all fit together on the first try.
    • 4th Module: Ideally, all robots should be assembled and working before the module starts to give the software teams sufficient time to do physical testing with the new robots and to tune PID’s etc. During physical testing you will find out which parts are most fragile and break most easily. If possible you could try to improve these components. Otherwise, you can make sure you have enough spare parts for the Robocup during this module.
  • Keep discussing things with the other subteams since everything depends on each other.
    • E.G. geneva drive can be cool, but should also be implemented in AI strategies and in the control code of the robot.
    • E.G. if new pcb’s are being designed, this should be taken into account in the mechanical design as well.
    • E.G. changing the positions/amount of wheels requires huge changes in the control code.
    • E.G. certain colors might interfere with the vision software.