Welcome back to another Robot Review! This week we take a look at the Aquabots, a team from Western Massachusetts. Many members of the Aquabots joined Overclocked (the team that currently runs this blog) in 2022, but the original kept on going to this very day! We talked to them recently at a scrimmage about their philosophy behind their robot design, and where Austin talks about his involvement on the team
| FACT SHEET (as of November 20, 2024): | |
| Team Name and Number: | Aquabots, 22059 |
| Team Location: | Holyoke, Massachusetts, United States |
| Team Affiliation (Community/School): | Community |
| Team Rookie Year: | 2018-19, Rover Ruckus |
| Team Size: | 5 |
| Team Mascot: | Charles II |
| Team Awards: | Finalist Alliance Captain (Local, 2019-20, later advanced to states) Control Award (Local, 2020-21) |
| Drive Train: | Homemade |
| Main Parts: | Motor for ‘hand’, servo for a bucket to grab samples and linear slide. |
Zach – So you generally have a building role on your team?
Austin- Yes, I’ve been mainly working on building, though I do know how to code in the language that they are using (Java).
Z – When was your personal rookie year?
A – I have been doing robotics with FIRST for quite a while. My mom worked with FIRST before I was born, and she taught FIRST Lego League at my elementary school. I may have been a member of (some FLL) teams, but I mostly remember being older than the teams and working with them like a Teacher’s Assistant. Then, I joined a FIRST Robotics Competition team in my freshman year at Northampton High School, which was amazing. I worked with my team, and that’s when I felt like a rookie. It wasn’t like it was my first year with FIRST, but that’s when I was a freshman. I had to be taught all the new tools, I worked with machining and I mostly just did what people told me to do. I helped with some design, but I was mainly just a set of hands. Then our team was sort of shut down by the administration. So, we weren’t able to compete in the competition in my sophomore year, but we still worked on some more fun projects unrelated to FIRST with some scrap materials. Then that stopped and then I joined this FTC team a year later.
Z – Why did you decide to go to the Aquabots and rejoin FIRST?
A – Well I was missing it, it had been a while and I really enjoyed my time with the Northampton team and I wanted to get back into it. It was also the time of college applications so I want to look as good as I can.
Z – What are the goals for building this year’s robot?
A – In general or day-to-day?
Z – Let’s start with in general, and then we can do day-to-day.
A – When we first saw it, the main thought that people seemed to come up with was, “with what we have, what can we do to achieve what we need to do?” Like with the pivoting arm and the linear slide, how can we get those to pick up samples and put them in the upper bucket? We didn’t think of other things as much, like climbing or putting on the clip; efficiency-wise, the points might not be worth the time that it would take. So we thought about how we could get a good start instead. We set up the robot with the arm and the linear slide, and then we went into more detail, adding some servos here and there, changed the hand at the end of the arm, added a bucket at the end of the linear slide, and moved the linear slide, stuff like that.
Z – I guess I’ll ask about the day-to-day now because when you’re working with the robot, your short-term goals and priorities can be different from long-term ones.
A – Usually, we come in with some urgent things we need to do from last week. Once we’re done with those, we end up working on longer-term goals
Z – What fabrication tools do you have access to?
A – We have a few 3D printers but that’s about it.
Z – How much of your robot is pre-bought?
A – So we pre-bought the linear slide and the arm and base. We added the bucket, and the bulk of the weight is mainly premade, but we made many smaller parts.
Z – Where did you get the wheels for the arm?
A – We got those from the original goBILDA pivoting arm kit, but we took it apart and then took the wheels and mounted them way differently.
Z – What have you learned from doing FTC with this team in general?
A – I don’t know if there is anything at least teamwork-wise, it’s just to have patience. Even if things are taking too long or it’s getting frustrating because everyone is trying their best.
Z – Yeah, that one is very important, speaking from experience.
Z – Thanks for interviewing, it was nice talking with you!
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