Robotics prepares for FRC challenge with new module

The Gryphon Robotics team began the year with planning, designing and building a robot to compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) with a new module.
FIRST is an international organization that facilitates robotics competitions for grades K through 12. Under strict rules, limited resources and limited time, FRC challenges teams to build and program robots to perform prescribed tasks against a field of competitors.
This year, FRC issued a challenge where two opposing robots will compete against each other to collect as many rubber balls as possible during periodic “sandstorms,” which impair driver visibility.
“It takes a lot of research to figure out how to structure everything,” junior and programming team member Lee Peterson said. “The programming part is easy, but the key is to make everything work together.”
In previous years, Gryphon Robotics did not have a vision processing application, but one of their sponsors, Nvidia, gave them a module to aid the team in this field: the Nvidia Jetson TX2.
“Nvidia Jetson TX2 makes us able to use visual processing, which helps us locate and track objects and move [the robot] towards them,” junior and programming captain Parsia Bahrami said.
Bahrami also said using the new module will allow for the robot to operate with full autonomy.
“The fully autonomous [robot helps us] to be able to score points without the need for [human] drivers to operate the robot during the blind [sandstorm] phase of the event,” Bahrami said.
Though the competition is not until June, teams of high school students and their coaches work for a six week period called “build season” to create a robot that meets the game’s requirements.
With the new parts, senior and team captain Elena Bachman said she looks forward to the season.
“We are planning to move away from the [FRC]-provided drivetrains and do something we design ourselves, which is exciting,” Bachman said. “Our team has grown a lot, and I think this season will go better than last year.”