Build Season 2008

The 2008 Build Season began on a rainy Saturday morning, as a group set out to USC to attend the kickoff and pick-up the kit of parts. Meanwhile, the rest of the team met at an alumni's house to watch the televised broadcast, and begin brainstorming. Our team discussed our strategic priorities for the game, and how we wanted to achieve them mechanically. In order to get a better sense of the game, we drove last year's robot in a loop, about the size of Overdrive's field. That evening, we hosted a family kickoff potluck, where we explained the game to parents and relatives. This also proved to be an opportunity for parents to meet one another, and for us to explain our expectations for the season.

For the rest of the week, as we continued brainstorming and stragizing, all of the students broke up into groups with specific components or tasks for the robot, including programming, electrical, systems, and mechanical groups. The mechanical groups built and tested as many prototypes as they could as well as a sample overpass, while the drivetrain group started on an initial chassis. The students working on the electrical group tested the infrared receiver provided by FIRST and began building their first board, while the programming team starting testing code on last year's robot.

During our second week, some parts of our prototype became well-developed, while others remained in the testing phase. By organizing simple tests of certain components, we were able to foresee where our weaknesses in playing the game may be, and started creating accessory parts to solve these potential issues.

Production of major components began in week 3, and our machine closet constantly kept busy. We made prototype pieces to test, as well as pieces that we knew would not change for the final robot. Testing of the viability of several ideas for components continued, while our first chassis was put together.

Meanwhile, the electrical team put together their second electrical board, while each student designed a circuit board to be fabricated.

By the fourth week, we tested complete prototypes, with integrated programming and electrical components. Students also went to our partners' machine shop to weld parts.

At the end of the fourth week, a group of students dedicated themselves to completing the overall CAD design of the robot, and to guarantee that all of the parts worked with one another, so that fabrication could commence. While quite a large undertaking, and pain-stakingly detailed, this process certainly made the final product much more streamlined.

By week 5, we had a fully-functional test robot, which allowed our drivers to start practicing in our gym. Testing the prototype robot helped each of the sub-teams debug their components, while we began building our final pieces.

Over the last week of build season, everything came together. We put the final robot together, and had to design some pieces on the fly. A group of students made our operator interface, while others composed the final electrical board. While we still had the test robot, our two drivers practiced as much as possible.

Finally, on Tuesday, February 19, after a long 4-day weekend which did not include much sleep for most of our members, we had a robot that worked beautifully. We couldn't ogle over it for too long, though, because it was soon time to pack it up in its crate, and send it on its way via FedEx Freight.