WMD in 2 Days

The West Michigan District event (WMD - not weapons of mass destruction) will be kicking off in 2 days. Thursday evening we get to put our pit area together, un-bag and prep our robot and hopefully get it inspected. The event gets into full swing Friday morning with some practice matches. Opening ceremonies are at 11 am and the competition should begin around 11:30.

We went over the software that controls the robot tonight, and made some minor changes that targeted various areas of the code. Our autonomous mode that seeks and tracks an opposing robot should not stop and "look" for an opponent anymore. In Traverse City the robot would stop and look until if found something to attack. Not a good plan when the moon rocks are flying over the wall continuously.

We also added a new mode to our growing collection of autonomous modes. We now have the "sit n spin" that was quite effective at other events. This mode simply drives the robot onto the crater and spins at full throttle. It's next to impossible to get a moon rock in your trailer while spinning.

The drive team also requested a change as to how we engage our traction control. Our programmers worked with the drivers and together they've worked out a solution that is better than what we had at Traverse City. What we had won us the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Controls Award in TC. Not bad!

Tomorrow we get to un-bag our machine again for a couple hours. We're going to be double and maybe triple checking everything. We're ready for WMD.