Come support Team 4909 at our Blaze Pizza Fundraiser in Billerica MA on April 22nd from 5:00-9:00 PM. The team is excited to work with Blaze Pizza again because they made contactless ordering easy with their app and website, and all these purchases count towards the fundraiser. The steps to enter the promo code into the app are found at the bottom of the flyer. If you are dining in, or ordering in person simply mention Team 4909 - Billerica Bionics or show the flyer to the employee assisting you. We hope to see lots of orders placed using our code or mentioning the team! Thank you for your support!

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Name: Matthew Young

Title: Robot Lead

Years on Team: 4 

Areas of Focus and Responsibilities: “I am responsible for helping in the design and manufacturing processes of systems and system integration. I also work closely with the build leads to make sure everything gets done on time.” Matthew works to ensure deadlines are met and the team stays on task.

Impact FIRST has had: “Before joining the team I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career. Since joining, my path has become clear and I have decided to become an engineer.”

Favorite 4909 memory: “My favorite Team 4909 memory was finally winning a blue banner after 6 years of watching and working with the team.”

Plans After High School: “I will be going to college for mechanical engineering.”

Ideal Job: Mechanical engineer with a spacecraft or aircraft concentration.

Name: Adriana Ortiz

Title: Safety and Mechanical Team Member

Years on Team: 2

Areas of Focus and Responsibilities: “I am a safety deputy this year. Additionally, this season I am focusing on the design and manufacturing of the intake and indexer subsystems on the robot.” 

Impact FIRST has had: “FIRST has strengthened my leadership skills. From working on the robot last year I saw firsthand how much teamwork goes into such a big project. I saw how you need to have a bond with everyone to succeed. Teamwork is key and having a relationship with who you work with helps a lot.”

Favorite 4909 memory: “Going to the Granite State District event and winning our first blue banner and the safety award last year”

Plans After High School: “I plan on attending Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS) and becoming an Occupational Therapist.”
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Ideal Job: Occupational Therapist at Boston Children’s Hospital

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Name: Saketh Mynampati 

Title: Software Lead

Years on Team: 4

Areas of Focus and Responsibilities: “I am the software lead for Team 4909. I oversee all the software parts of the robot.” He coordinates with build leads and talks about what each subsystem needs to achieve.
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The Impact FIRST has had: “FIRST has helped me determine that engineering is the path I want to pursue in the future, and building a real-world-scale robot each of the last 4 years was an exciting process every time. On Team 4909, the students primarily design and build the robot, which is definitely great real-world preparation. I was able to have a leadership position and communicate with the other team members to get opinions and their point of view on what they think is best for the robot, and I've really enjoyed the creative engineering process that I have been involved in while being a member of this team." 

Favorite 4909 memory: “Being at competitions; I loved the hectic pace of the competitions, the environment, and the fun memories that come with it.”

Plans After High School: “I plan to attend college and pursue a major in engineering; likely electrical or biomedical engineering. I also want to be a part of/run a STEM outreach program.” 

​Ideal Job: Something involving research and development

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Team Operations:

   Team Ops has been working on the Innovation Challenge, while brainstorming many ideas. This week, the group narrowed them down to two, and has explored the problem for each idea. After discussing how to solve them, the group began writing an executive summary for both ideas, briefly looking over and modifying them at the start of each meeting. After working on both summaries, the team has decided which idea they will be submitting to FIRST.  Aside from the Innovation Challenge submission, the team had their second Mooyah fundraiser of the season this past Wednesday! We were happy to see so many faces, and the team is very grateful for all the support. We hope you enjoyed your meal! Additionally, Team Ops has also posted our first senior spotlight this past week. Each senior spotlight talks about a senior’s experience with FIRST on the team, as well as their goals for the future. Keep checking back each week to learn a little more about each of our seniors!



Intake/Indexer: 
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       The intake/indexer group has been mainly focusing on student training and designing. This past week, members have diligently created a prototype of their system in CAD.  Veteran members have been training new members how to use specific features of the software. The goal is to bring the group up to a level where they are able to work collaboratively and productively together. With a CAD model of both the intake and indexer, the group is excited to start manufacturing both prototypes soon. A detailed list of hardware to procure for the intake prototype has been made, and the next step is to transition to CNC machining of designed parts.

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Swerve: 

      Throughout the week, the swerve group continued to work on refining the first design iteration to prepare it for manufacturing. The group also made several minor changes that we believe will improve the performance of the system and also increase its reliability. The majority of the work left for the first iteration is manufacturing the components, assembling them, and testing to see how it works. The group will be collecting data on how well the system performs and using this feedback to improve the design before manufacturing a second iteration, which will hopefully be a more polished design. The team is currently in the process of 3D printing several of the prototyping components and will begin assembly as soon as those are finished.

Shooter: 

       Throughout the week, the shooter group has been developing and fine-tuning the CAD prototype, with hopes to begin manufacturing parts very soon. The group began with the plates on the sides that keep the whole structure together. During this initial stage, members went into the more detailed aspects of CAD and learned many key functions that Onshape offers. As the design was developed, additional adjustments were made to improve the mechanism. Some of the modifications made were adding several holes for refining locations of additional parts. These modifications provided support and relocation for the motor. The group started adding more specifics to the CAD design, which helped visualize how it would operate. Members learned how to make custom pulleys and how to calculate the correct belt length for a pulley system.

Control Panel: 
The Control Panel group has been nearing the end of the CAD prototype for our build. To gather some helpful feedback from other members of the team, the group created a presentation to be sent out. After some feedback was received, the group decided to change some aspects of the CAD design. First, the group began designing the color sensor mount with a piece of Lexan that would be mounted on the gearbox to optimize an accurate read. After a few calculations, the group assessed that the control panel’s height was above regulation. To fix this error, a new mount had to be designed, or the height had to be reduced on the current design to become more durable. In order to move on with prototyping, the group must determine how to make the design fit under the control panel while keeping the same height of the color sensor. 

​Software: 
​Since the beginning of February, the software team has been hard at work preparing for our team’s new robot, Mantis for the At-Home Challenges, which will require a great deal of autonomous control. To accomplish this variety of tasks, the software team has split up into multiple groups each meeting: one for building our prototyping robot, Frankenstein, one for working on smoother handling of the robot, and one for computer vision in order to help us succeed in the autonomous At-Home challenges. We’re nearing completion of the Galactic Search challenge, which requires a camera and autonomous driving. The software team will continue discussing some of the essential things we’ll need to include on the upcoming robot.​

The team has grown a lot since the start of the school year. Covid has not stopped the interest in STEM. We have received 21 new members, doubling our team in size. The new members along with the veterans have been hard at work over the past few weeks. After kick-off, we identified new ways to improve communications with each other, had a change in our meeting schedule, and divided into different subsections. With our new meeting schedule, the team meets four times a week; two days that are fully remote, and two days that are in person. For these in person meetings, members have the option to be remote and are still able to participate in the meetings. These in-person meetings invite all team members to come in and work with everyone else on the team. With this, we have introduced new safety measures and protocols to ensure that every team member will be safe. This allows us to safely roll into a strong start to the build season. Each member has the option of what area they would like to go. There are six different subsections of the robot. From there, each member has been assigned into a specific subsystem, a model that the team has used in past seasons.

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Team Operations:
Team operations talked about rebranding the team, and some of the members have created sketches that may replace the current logo. Although we will not be changing our team logo this year, these designs may be implemented next year for future seasons. The team has worked on setting up the Mooyah fundraiser and making it official. Check out our previous blog post for more information. Along with rebranding, team ops has been writing handwritten letters to send out to our sponsors. These handwritten letters are more personal, and will let our sponsors know that the team is still active and that we appreciate their support. We have also been updating the layout and information on our team website so it is more up to date and fresh. We have also been working on coming up with ideas for the innovation challenge which we mentioned in the 2021 Kickoff Blog Post, as well as working on making the team t-shirts for this season. 

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Software: 
Since the start of the new FIRST Robotics season, the software team has been especially hard at work. We’ve focused on onboarding the new members by involving them in peer programming and planning. Additionally, our highest-priority goals are completing the team’s main build project (the swerve drive) and excelling in the at-home challenges offered by FIRST this year. This means learning the basics of swerve and the mathematics required to implement it, as well as the programming logic behind it. We’ve also been working to integrate computer vision into our robot in order to complete the Galactic Search challenge, where we seek out Power Cells randomly placed on the field.

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Shooter Group:
The shooter group has been reading and discussing the game manual for this year’s competition. We went over rules, regulations, dimensions, and penalties. Then, broke off and discussed possible strategies for gameplay, like field maneuvering, cycles, possible shooting positions, and different ways to score lots of points. Then, we started to make needs, wants, and nice to have lists so we can prioritize what needs to be worked on. Now that the team is able to meet in person, the group started some concept sketches after looking at last year's robot, considering the pros and cons. Then, discussed values of these concepts, and looked into materials for certain parts of the robot. We began training the new members on Onshape (CAD Software) for practice before designing the shooter. With the guidance of our mentors, students created a simple drivetrain. Then we started a CAD sketch of the shooter, while referencing the one from last year’s robot. To do this, the group used a graphical simulation to test different shooting angles with different heights, and velocities. 

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Intake/Indexer:
Since members are participating both virtually and in person, the intake/indexer group used zoom to include the virtual members so everyone was able to collaborate. Together, we came up with designs on a white board for moving a power cell from the floor to the shooter. With new members, the group did some training on CAD. Using that training, designs from a whiteboard were transferred to the CAD software.

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Control Panel:
The control panel group has started planning how they would like to build the manipulator while staying under the trench run height. The plan we ended up choosing was a pneumatic piston that will push a motor that has a stack of wheels attached to the top of it. The motor would be attached by a pivot point, so it can stay in a rested state until it is ready to be used. The group has started discussing locations it could be mounted on, such as the intake or the shooter’s hood. The location may change the design and their idea on how they would like to do this. After discussing possible mounting options, the group is waiting to begin the design process of mounts and locations. Since we don’t have a solid mounting spot yet, the group built the chassis in the CAD software and attached the new swerve drive modules, then designed new bumpers to attach to the chassis. The dimensions of the wheel pattern, height, and speeds to run the manipulator were tested and after inserting a motor with additional wheels to it, the group applied it to our 2019 robot for testing. Sadly it didn’t work out so we moved to the next option, which was to attach it to our most recent robot and retest the patterns to optimize the situation. The group has determined the ideal wheel pattern and height with a combination of 2-3 wheels and a height of approximately 31 inches from the ground. Motor speeds will be recorded soon. 

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Swerve:
Since the build season began, the swerve group has been focusing on getting each student caught up on the progress of the swerve module, and focused on design skills to begin modifying the CAD model. In the process, the current design has been tweaked, and some of the components have been tested to see if they work or if they need to be changed. A full scale 3D printed prototype of the main component stack of a module has been assembled to use as a test-bed. Unfortunately, testing has shown that significant design improvements are necessary in order to ensure the module and overall drivetrain will work. Now that the group is comfortable with the internals of the system and how it works, we are able to continue to push forward and make improvements that will ensure the longevity and efficiency of the drivetrain.

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