FTC Season Brainstorming

Last week our team, team 6121, had several brainstorming sessions that helped us decide what we wanted to do for our robot that we are going to take to competitions this year. During these brainstorming session s our team bounced several ideas back and forth, some good and some bad, and we ended up coming up with some great ideas that we will probably use during the season. First, we discussed what type of drive train we wanted to have. We narrowed it down to either a four wheel drive or a west coast drive system (where there are six wheels and the middle wheel on each side is moved slightly towards the floor). After we narrowed down the types of drive systems that we wanted we went to build prototypes of each system. we currently have one side of the west coast drive system completely built and another side in the making. We have also gotten the four wheel drive robot completely done. During the brainstorming session we also discussed possible ways for our robot to score points. We ended up deciding to use vacuum tubing to scoop the balls in from the front and into a dumper which would be raised to the appropriate height using a lift. We thought that this idea would be the best for scoring. We also thought of having hooks on the back of the robot that would grab onto the tubes that held the balls so we could pull them along with us so we could score faster.

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