Build Season Day 8

We started out by talking about different arm/elevator/lifter methods and have come up with 2 or 3 favorites that we are CADing. We made a spreadsheet of our ideas along with a rough ranking system.

Then we had a fundraising meeting. We still need money if we want to go to the Championship and lots of people now have volunteered to ask various companies for money. We are lucky to have the first $2000 we raise matched.

We decided to drive the prototype around again to show it off and get some more practice with it. In the process, the camera power cord (which had been disconnected from the '10 robot's camera, but not from the electronics board (i.e. it was floating around loosely)) ended up on the power source from the power distribution board. The cable got very warm and melted some of its plastic and is no longer usable. Everything else is fine. Then we decided that we should finalize our chassis frame so we could send it to Loftech to weld. This led to a discussion of how to support the arm which led to another discussion of arm designs. So we will try to have the different versions of the arms CADed ASAP. A small group of "design representatives" so to speak are planning a trip to Loftech to discuss our design with them.

Things to do:
Drive/chassis system:
Work out any remaining bugs in the code.
DRIVER PRACTICE!

Arm system:
More CADing!
Current primary design ideas include:
2 stage elevator (probably pneumatics) and a (shorter-ish) rotating
arm
a multi stage elevator similar to Team 25's from 2007 and a
fixed gripper

Gripper system:
More CADing! Or maybe some prototyping....
Current design ideas include:
powered wheels on the top and rollers on the bottom
powered wheels on the top and the bottom
a pneumatic grabber of some sort
the "Pez dispenser" design

Build Season Day 7

We took the prototype out for a spin and one of the CIMple boxes was being sketchy (as we had noticed on Thursday). Then we noticed that the key was no longer in the gear box..... After finding and inserting it, the prototype ran very nicely. You can find a video at http://qik.com/video/29163485. After seeing how maneuverable the prototype was, the general consensus was to go with the holonomic drive train.

We then built a to-scale scoring peg to model gripper methods so we could see how well they placed the rings and to get a general of the dynamics of scoring the rings. It can be clamped at different heights along the stair way to model any of the heights if we want. We concluded that its best to score vertically, but still possible in just about any other orientation.

Build Season Day 6

Today we continued work on the prototype robot including the mounting of the tough boxes and the electronics board. We (aka Aren) downloaded coded and at the end of the meeting we were able to drive the bot around (strafing, driving, and pinning). However, one set of motors seemed to be having some issues, but we ran out of time to positively determine what said issues were. We will all try driving it tomorrow/this weekend.

Action Items:

Drive/chassis system:
Figure out what's wrong with that one set of motors.
Figure out why the signal light wasn't doing anything.
Watch where the center of gravity is. (i.e. check that the battery is centered)
Work out any remaining bugs in the code.
DRIVER PRACTICE!
Complete our analysis of drive train options and continue moving towards a completed frame design that we can send off to be welded together.

Arm system:
More CADing!
Current design ideas include:
elevator and a (shorter-ish) arm
double jointed arm (more like an arm and an articulated wrist)

Gripper system:
More CADing! And probably some prototyping....
Current design ideas include:
powered wheels on the top and rollers on the bottom
powered wheels on the top and the bottom
a pneumatic grabber of some sort

You may be wondering... The Minibot is kind of on the back burner for now. While it is a lot of points, we don't have a whole lot of people to split off and focus on that right now. Because of this, we are considering pulling in MSA students from FLL to work on this, as a way to get them involved, get this task done, and keep the team alive. We also plan to commit our own efforts to this a little later when some of these more important details (we think) are figured out. And it is part of the Withholding Allowance, so if worst comes to worst we'll do it after Ship.

Flashback...

Silly us. We jumped right into gruesome shop details without any introduction. On Saturday January 8th, FIRST revealed the 2011 FRC game to us at the Kickoff. It is called LogoMotion and involved placing inflated tubes on racks to form the FIRST logo and deploying tower-climbing minibots at the end of the match. Here's the 2011 Game Animation:



The FIRST website has lots more information.

Now we scramble for 6 weeks to design, build, program, and otherwise conjure a robot to compete in the game!

Build Season Day 5

Today we continued working on the prototype robot. We took one CIM out of the tough boxes and reassembled them with one CIM. We also assembled the CIMple boxes. The CIMple boxes were mounted to the chassis and the chain is in place. (Side note: The motors are facing outwards instead of inwards like normal people mount them. When we build it for real we will have 2 layers (i.e. top and bottom) but we don't want to make 2 layers for this prototype.) (We still need to mount the tough boxes.) We removed the electronics board from last year's robot and it conveniently fits right between the wheels. We need to add a jaguar to the board. It will go in the place that the 2 victors (which we removed) were sitting.

Next items of action:
Finish the prototype:
attach the tough boxes
attach the electronics board
find someplace to mount the battery

CAD/create arm designs

CAD/create minibot designs

Build Season Day 4

The team shared our design ideas with the East Ridge team at the beginning of the meeting yesterday. We are in the process of building a working drive prototype, and are working out the details for reductions, motors, etc. We also learned that the robot needs to fit inside a 84 inch cylinder instead of a 60 inch cylinder. This means that we have a few more options for the lifting mechanism and this will probably be discussed today.

Our plan for the first few weeks is to continue the brainstorming and fill out the details to the best few designs for each system (drive, arm, gripper, minibot) using CAD, calculations, and drawings. Then we hope to do what prototyping is necessary to fully assess which designs are best. By week 2 or 3, we will have a completed CAD model of our competition robot, send it off to our manufacturer for the initial frame welding and construction, and then get it back and put everything else together. The remaining 1-3 weeks would ideally be for testing everything exhaustively, getting the code working how we want, and getting lots of drive practice. This process is radically against the traditional Fighting Calculator method of just throwing together a robot for 6 weeks, and we hope it will yield a more polished product and give us more time to work out the bugs and get it competition ready.

Build Season Day 3

Today the team discussed the two remaining ideas for a drive-train and the tube manipulation device. We decided on a octagonal bot with 4 sets of omni-wheels. Two of the wheels will have slightly more power for driving forward. The gripper has yet to be finalized, but we have determined that using a vacuum on the gripper is not a good option. The arm will be a thin 4 foot long piece of metal that is powered from a single shoulder joint. This shoulder will be attached to some type of elevating mechanism on the robot to allow it to tuck into the robot at the beginning of the match and extend to pick up tubes off of the floor and reach the highest hanger which is over 9 feet from the ground. The robot will be able to hang the tubes on the 4 highest hangers by flipping the tube over the back, but the lowers one must be hung with the robot facing forward. Unless a better option is found, the camera will be mounted in a fixed spot looking down the arm.

Highlight Videos available!

Two videos of highlights for the team are now available on Vimeo and YouTube. Go watch them to see in a visually engaging way how our team did this past year! One video is geared more toward the team itself and one is more geared toward sponsors and future team members.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxWNhprFUwI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiwLXR46ZsM

End-of-year Banquet

The team held a banquet last night to celebrate a good year and to say goodbye to Kevin O'Connor, the founder of the Fighting Calculators and mentor for four years.  The team also watched the Chairman's Award video and a video of highlights from the year, which you can see below.


A summary of the year for our team in photos and videos.

Presentation at District 833 School Board Meeting

Yesterday evening the three Woodbury FRC teams (the Fighting Calculators, the ERRORs, and Woodbury High School's Stereotropic Prototype) presented at a school board meeting for school district 833.  A spokesperson from each team got up and collaboratively gave a presentation about what FIRST is, the partnership between the three Woodbury teams, and the results of participating in FIRST activities.  At the end of the presentation, both our robot and the ERRORs' robot deployed their lifters, and attached to the lifter of East Ridge's robot was a sign that said "Thank you for your time".