AscendRobotics/AscendData · Datasets at Hugging Face

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A GANTT chart is a simple, concise, and effective time management tool. It gives a rough outline of how much time should be allocated to each aspect of robotics and demonstrates advanced time management skills. Here's an example early-season GANTT chart:


Budget
Following 515R's example, we recommend including a budgeting page at the beginning of the notebook. This will help your team to get a realistic estimate of the financial resources necessary to compete at the level you want to. Again, this shows the judges that your team can manage the project diligently and effectively.


Why the pie chart? Because it looks nice and conveys information effectively
Content Pages
These pages make up the bulk of the notebook; they document the designing, building, testing, and refining of the robot and game strategy.
Game Analysis
The game analysis section has four main goals:
1. 1.
2. Describe the goals of the game and how to score points
3. 2.
4. Document the specifications of field and game elements
5. 3.
6. Discuss the game rules in-depth
7. 4.
8. Determine which game strategies are viable
Describe Goals
The engineering notebook rubric states that teams must:
Identify the game and robot design challenges in detail at the start of each design process cycle with words and pictures. State the goals for accomplishing the challenge
Thus, it is important to explicitly lay out the goals for the game. Here's a simple example for VEX Over Under:


Document Specifications
Next, make sure to identify the dimensions of each field element and game piece. This will come in handy later, during the designing phase. Here's an example of the goal dimensions in Over Under.


Discuss Rules
After that, describe the specific rules of the game. We recommend giving a broad overview of the scoring and penalty rules, then summarizing each specific game rule.


Concise summaries of three specific game rules. Use your words, not the game manual's!
Determine Strategies
Then, list out some of the potential strategies that might be viable. This will help with the designing of the robot later on, as it shows you which aspects of the game are the most important. We analyzed 7-8 different strategies in Over Under; here's a small snippet:


The Advantages / Disadvantages tables are adapted from team 515R's notebook
Design Constraints
While not technically required by the rubric, adding a short and sweet section on the basic design constraints in VEX adds an element of completeness.


Not a complete list, but a good starting point
Brainstorming
This is where your team generates possible designs for the robot.
The Engineering Notebook Rubric states that the notebook should
List three or more possible solutions to the challenge with labeled diagrams. Citations provided for ideas that came from outside sources such as online videos or other teams.
Each subsystem of the robot should have at least three unique designs, in order to earn full credit on the rubric. Each design should include a full CAD (or at least a detailed drawing), as well as labels for each aspect of the design. Then, explain the design and list the advantages and disadvantages of it. Here's an example page showcasing a possible design for the drivetrain:


Give credit where credit is due! Note the small text underneath the table
Planning
At this point, your team should have analyzed the game and identified three possible designs for each subsystem of the robot. But how do you know which design you should build?
That's the purpose of a decision matrix; it determines the best design by comparing each design's strengths and weaknesses. Testing also works, but the decision matrix is more efficient.
The Engineering Notebook Rubric says that the notebook must:
Explain why the solution was selected through testing and/or a decision matrix. Fully describes the plan to implement the solution.
Here's an example of a decision matrix for the drivetrain. Make sure to explain each criteria in the decision matrix. See the page on decision matrices for more information on how to make one.


Furthermore, make sure to fully describe the plan to implement the solution. The plan doesn't have to be extremely detailed or complex, but it does have to be there.


Building
Now, it's time for the fun part! Once you've determined the best design, it's time to build it!
According to the Engineering Design Rubric, the notebook should:
Record the steps to build and program the solution. Includes enough detail that the reader can follow the logic used by the team to develop their robot design, as well as recreate the robot design from the documentation.
That is, the notebook should include enough detail that anyone could re-create the exact robot just from the notebook and the materials used. Label images as much as possible, and make sure to explain every last screw on the robot and why it is there. Here's an example of a page detailing how part of an intake was built:


A picture is worth a thousand words
It's worth noting that you should also include the full code of the robot after every major revision. When only a small part of the code changes, only include that bit of code, and make sure to describe what changed and why.
Here's a small snippet of a main loop, in C++


Example code
Testing
Does the robot work? Well, there's only one way to find out. Test it!
The Engineering Notebook Rubric is very clear; the notebook should
Record all the steps to test the solution, including test results.
There's a lot of freedom in terms of how you decide test the robot. Of course, the tests should be a valid measure of the effectiveness of the robot or subsystem. Here's an example of a drivetrain test:


Short and sweet
Tournament Analysis
Tournaments are a great way to stress-test the robot under intense gameplay. After each tournament, your team should analyze:
* How and why the robot malfunctioned
* Number of points scored from each element of the game in each match
* Other robot designs and strategies that worked well
Here's an example of how to document the problems the robot encountered:


Be specific--the purpose of this is to allow you to fix these things later on so it doesn't happen again
Here's an example of scoring analysis from Spin Up. Note how we kept track of how we scored points, which allows us to see our strengths and weaknesses.


Scoring analysis
Here's an example of how to analyze other strategies (for Spin Up):

A GANTT chart is a simple, concise, and effective time management tool. It gives a rough outline of how much time should be allocated to each aspect of robotics and demonstrates advanced time management skills. Here's an example early-season GANTT chart:

Budget

Following 515R's example, we recommend including a budgeting page at the beginning of the notebook. This will help your team to get a realistic estimate of the financial resources necessary to compete at the level you want to. Again, this shows the judges that your team can manage the project diligently and effectively.

Why the pie chart? Because it looks nice and conveys information effectively

Content Pages

These pages make up the bulk of the notebook; they document the designing, building, testing, and refining of the robot and game strategy.

Game Analysis

The game analysis section has four main goals:

1. 1.

2. Describe the goals of the game and how to score points

3. 2.

4. Document the specifications of field and game elements

5. 3.

6. Discuss the game rules in-depth

7. 4.

8. Determine which game strategies are viable

Describe Goals

The engineering notebook rubric states that teams must:

Identify the game and robot design challenges in detail at the start of each design process cycle with words and pictures. State the goals for accomplishing the challenge

Thus, it is important to explicitly lay out the goals for the game. Here's a simple example for VEX Over Under:

Document Specifications

Next, make sure to identify the dimensions of each field element and game piece. This will come in handy later, during the designing phase. Here's an example of the goal dimensions in Over Under.

Discuss Rules

After that, describe the specific rules of the game. We recommend giving a broad overview of the scoring and penalty rules, then summarizing each specific game rule.

Concise summaries of three specific game rules. Use your words, not the game manual's!

Determine Strategies

Then, list out some of the potential strategies that might be viable. This will help with the designing of the robot later on, as it shows you which aspects of the game are the most important. We analyzed 7-8 different strategies in Over Under; here's a small snippet:

The Advantages / Disadvantages tables are adapted from team 515R's notebook

Design Constraints

While not technically required by the rubric, adding a short and sweet section on the basic design constraints in VEX adds an element of completeness.

Not a complete list, but a good starting point

Brainstorming

This is where your team generates possible designs for the robot.

The Engineering Notebook Rubric states that the notebook should

List three or more possible solutions to the challenge with labeled diagrams. Citations provided for ideas that came from outside sources such as online videos or other teams.

Each subsystem of the robot should have at least three unique designs, in order to earn full credit on the rubric. Each design should include a full CAD (or at least a detailed drawing), as well as labels for each aspect of the design. Then, explain the design and list the advantages and disadvantages of it. Here's an example page showcasing a possible design for the drivetrain:

Give credit where credit is due! Note the small text underneath the table

Planning

At this point, your team should have analyzed the game and identified three possible designs for each subsystem of the robot. But how do you know which design you should build?

That's the purpose of a decision matrix; it determines the best design by comparing each design's strengths and weaknesses. Testing also works, but the decision matrix is more efficient.

The Engineering Notebook Rubric says that the notebook must:

Explain why the solution was selected through testing and/or a decision matrix. Fully describes the plan to implement the solution.

Here's an example of a decision matrix for the drivetrain. Make sure to explain each criteria in the decision matrix. See the page on decision matrices for more information on how to make one.

Furthermore, make sure to fully describe the plan to implement the solution. The plan doesn't have to be extremely detailed or complex, but it does have to be there.

Building

Now, it's time for the fun part! Once you've determined the best design, it's time to build it!

According to the Engineering Design Rubric, the notebook should:

Record the steps to build and program the solution. Includes enough detail that the reader can follow the logic used by the team to develop their robot design, as well as recreate the robot design from the documentation.

That is, the notebook should include enough detail that anyone could re-create the exact robot just from the notebook and the materials used. Label images as much as possible, and make sure to explain every last screw on the robot and why it is there. Here's an example of a page detailing how part of an intake was built:

A picture is worth a thousand words

It's worth noting that you should also include the full code of the robot after every major revision. When only a small part of the code changes, only include that bit of code, and make sure to describe what changed and why.

Here's a small snippet of a main loop, in C++

Example code

Testing

Does the robot work? Well, there's only one way to find out. Test it!

The Engineering Notebook Rubric is very clear; the notebook should

Record all the steps to test the solution, including test results.

There's a lot of freedom in terms of how you decide test the robot. Of course, the tests should be a valid measure of the effectiveness of the robot or subsystem. Here's an example of a drivetrain test:

Short and sweet

Tournament Analysis

Tournaments are a great way to stress-test the robot under intense gameplay. After each tournament, your team should analyze:

* How and why the robot malfunctioned

* Number of points scored from each element of the game in each match

* Other robot designs and strategies that worked well

Here's an example of how to document the problems the robot encountered:

Be specific--the purpose of this is to allow you to fix these things later on so it doesn't happen again

Here's an example of scoring analysis from Spin Up. Note how we kept track of how we scored points, which allows us to see our strengths and weaknesses.

Scoring analysis

Here's an example of how to analyze other strategies (for Spin Up):