2021 FRC

2021 FRC is the first year and the only year I participated in FRC as a student. I was the lead mechanical engineer of the team. It was a tortuous journey of learning and building the robot. Although the robot was not successful, it was my inspiration to learn more about robotics.

The robot was designed for FRC 2020 game, and aimed to attend the 2021 off-season event RCC. The robot was designed to be a swerve drive robot with roller intake and a single DOF shooter.

My team was the first generation of 5449 Prototype after the lockdown during 2020. We were new to the FRC game, and we were not familiar with the robot components. The information was limited, but we somehow managed to build the robot without reference.

I was overconfident in the design of the robot, after some simple research on videos, I thought I could build the swerve drive without any problem. I was wrong. The swerve drive is a complex system, and it requires a lot of precise measurements and calculations. I did not consider the tolerance of the parts, and the robot was not able to move.

I regret the decision of using swerve drive, and I thought things would be better if I could use a 4-wheeled drive. But years later, I found that the serve choice was not the root of the problem. There are also maby other parts that was not properly designed. If there are more opportunities to learn more about the robot, I believe the robot would be better.