As a response to the FRC 2024 topic Crescendo, our team has gathered inspiration online and ideas for our own unique robot for the season. This year, our robot’s name is Phantom.
Phantom is a machine with iterations. Start with what we would call the Phantom.5. Phantom.5 is a robot with a swerve drive base and extendable shooter-intake modules. Upon finishing this robot, we quickly realized that such a design created two problems that would impact the bot during a competition: One, such design makes the robot light headed and thus controlling it to make a turn would make the bot shake; Two, the design is very venerable to impact, our shooter-intake modules would be likely destroyed, thus we would not want to take the risk of our shooter-intake modules breaking, not counting for the fact that we are completing halfway across the world. So we gathered up new ideas and designs and created the well-known Phantom 1.0. This design was open-sourced to the FRC community and so many other well known FRC teams in China has seen and taken inspiration from it, specific teams will not be named. This new design has kept the original design of the shooter-intake modules. Still, instead of extending outside the bot, we have added an under-bumper intake, which feeds the Note to our shooter (which is just our shooter-intake modules but repurposed). This would be a safer option for the robot design and save time for our robot to shoot the Note in the Speaker. This design has also allowed us to leave a space for the climb, which was not added until later in this competition. The unique design has also allowed us to add multiple cameras to aid our different automated programs, including GamePieces Detection through AI-DetectNet, Calculating Precise Target Positions, Auto-Calibration, Automatic Intake, Shooter Automatic Aiming, Automatic Target Approaching, etc. This concludes our robot Phantom 1.0, which competed in the FRC 2024 Canadian Pacific Regional. For more information on Phantom 2.0, Phantom 2.0 Pro, Phantom 3.0, and Phantom 4.0, please refer to other pages on this website referring to the FRC 2024 season.
This competition has come to an end. We have learned new knowledge, made new friends, broadened our horizons, and been tempered. We played four practice games on the first day. The machine was in good condition in these games, and the operator gradually found the feel. However, on the second day, we did make some serious mistakes: program failure, equipment failure, mechanical damage, operational errors, etc. Our new team is competing in the FRC competition for the first time, and the program we wrote was not perfect, so we don’t blame any team member. At the end of the second day’s game, we ranked 29th with two wins and six losses. The FRC competition system works so that 24 out of 36 teams qualify for the elimination tournament. Fortunately, it is not necessarily selected by ranking, but the teams choose each other, and the selection method is more complicated. We had to consider the worst-case scenario at this time, so we contacted and outreached top-ranking teams. But we repaired the machine’s auto-aiming system in the last few qualifying games on the third day. We performed well and rushed to 16th place. You don’t need to be surprised; the level of the machine we made is there, and we are the only team besides 359 that has two automatic aiming systems for intake and shooting. This is the level we should have. We became the second Vancouver team in the league selection. FIRST competitions have always paid more attention to process, spirit, and friendship, and even deliberately made the award ceremony brief to downplay the winning and losing of the game. We don’t regret accepting the invitation of the Vancouver team. As the second team, we showed our strength in the elimination match, which is still a great honor.
-By: Daniel
