MiniFRC has an interesting history of end-game tasks because saddly, in most games, no more than one or two robots have ended up regularly completing them. Climbing the tower in the Stronghold game was never attempted. A handful of robots could climb in Power Up and Deep Space but not many. The one exception was the 2017 game, which used the Steamworks rope climbing endgame task. Nearly half of robots that year could climb, likely because building a winch with velcro is much easier than any of the mechanisms needed in other years.

Mini Differential Swerve Drive is a project I started over a year ago. In FIRST Robotics Competition, Swerve Drive is a high-risk high reward drivetrain type that combines the omnidirectional capabilities of mechanism drive with the stellar traction of normal tank drive. The downside is the mechanical and programming complexity that is required to pull it off. For most teams, it is simply not effort effective to use, but in recent years it has been becoming more popular. For example teams like 2767 Stryke Force, 2910 Jack in the Bot, and 1323 MadTown have all brought swerve to Einstein finals.

The Trinity College International Fire Fighting Robot Contest is a yearly event where robots are tasked with navigating a simple maze and extinguishing a candle somewhere within as quickly as possible. On April 12th I flew up to Hartford, Connecticut to compete with my robot Pyrobot.

For years I have tested my electronics projects with ‘improvised power supplies’, usually 5V from my laptop USB port, some AA batteries, or a LiPo battery. I have decided I’ve had enough of that.

One of the most important things an autonomous robot must be able to do is see and understand its surroundings. There are many ways to accomplish this. If you have a lot of time or money to blow, you could use LIDAR or vision processing but these systems are often unnecessary.