Robotics 09'

At my highschool during the senior year, each student has to work on a project in which they learn something and apply it to their life. During it we have to keep some journal posts on another blog site... I decided to put them up here to share some of the stress, sleepless nights, and of course fun I had while doing mine!

I decided to run the FIRST Robotics team that was set up at our school.

Robotics log 5

Here are some memories:

This is just a reflection on the overall experience, written after my presentations have been done. Overall I really enjoyed my Senior Exhibit this year; it can be seen in some of my previous posts that I have been fairly stressed about the whole thing but I think in the end everything worked out better than I expected. My written document, my guide book, has been semi read by the captain of the team next year and he has said that it answered a lot of the questions he was worried about. There were obviously some things I missed, which I am just known noticing. So before the end of school I will update it where it is needed then post a final version either on the server or the website. If it goes on the website I will be able to edit it during the summer or even next year if needed. I truly hope the team utilizes it as a resource; for I know that there were mistakes I made which I don’t want them to repeat.

My Presentations went over well I think, I set the goal of trying to convey to the facility that were present how important the team is to the school. Because they are the ones who have the power to get money and visibility to the team. I have some faith in the members of the team next year, but you can’t expect high school students to bear the weight of running a whole team by themselves with no faculty support. There is also the issue of recruitment; the school could make the team count as something more than a club. The amount of work that goes into the team, I feel, qualifies it as a elective class with a grade. I don’t really see that ever happening but at least let it count as a sports credit or something to entice students to join. Once people are on the team they can see what it is really like, then they will enjoy it enough to get their friends on it. From there it is a domino effect that will only benefit the team.

I may be doing a shorter presentation to some of the middle school in the following weeks and try to gain some interest there. The only problem is that there is a lot going on in the next three weeks for me. If nothing else this year, I learned that I am very good at obligating myself to too many activities. Sleep, I think I remember that… But seriously the middle/lower school should have programs reinstituted in it that are related to science. The Lego team which used to be in the middle school was very successful, yet that was discontinued this year. Again this is a way that teachers need to get involved. FA in this century seems to be highly focused on two things; sports and basic academics. Lately the tone has been changing with better and more often inclusion of the arts with the many drama productions. But there still isn’t much focus on the sciences as there should be. I feel both the robotics team and Blue crab bowl don’t get the kind of respect that they should.

Hopefully these things change in the years to come. Anyways it has been a great experience; I think the way the senior exhibit was done this year was much better than before; with the rehearsal being private and the main presentation public.

Here is a link to all the videos of our elemination rounds: http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/team.php?team=2021

Robotics log 4

I am posting this later then I intended but there has been much going on. Our Competition is over! And Off season has officially begun. There is much to talk about with the competition. Overall everything went off great, however not better than I expected. Since drawbacks at getting the proper parts we needed in time, thus crippling the launching system we had original planned, we put on a much simpler dropping system. The simplicity of the design brought me the hope that we would not have many or any hitches at comp. There were however two big obstacles we faced, both of which I thought were taken care of. I am far from bitter about these thought because it just teaches me more, and allows me to add more to my guide book so future teams don’t make the same mistakes.

These mistakes were: 1. our programming failed pretty badly, see every match is only two minutes long. The first 15 seconds is autonomous mode, meaning the robot can only be guided by programming no human interference. In previous years this time period is usually insignificant and our attempts at programming a good autonomous has lead to more problems than good. So this year we decided that having one would probably not be worth it. Still, I insisted that we make one just in case, then we could simply upload it (I would find out later that I should have followed up with Ian, as this was never done). At the comp, unforeseen consequences arouse from not having one, it allowed the opposing teams to score a lot of points on us. So I decided it was best to put the code on, and then we ran into the problem noted in the parentheses above. Once we finally got our auto-mode up we saw that we had the wrong version of the software on our robot, this prevented us from taking full advantage of the auto-mode. By the time we got everything figured out we had already been through 4 matches where we were sitting ducks for the first 15 secs.

The other problem was that we didn’t read the rules carefully enough; the door mechanism on our ramps was designed to fall outside the edge of the robot so it would guide the balls into their targets. Having something go outside the edge of your robot had never been illegal until this year. We were informed about this in the middle of the comp (right when we were still trying to figure out the stuff above), so we had to do some quick thinking and move the doors up more so they would fall within the bot. But since they were made to guide the balls, we lost a lot of the control which we previously had. In turn we were not able to score as well as before.

Both of these problems were ones which could have been easily handled before comp if we had noticed them. It is not the fault of any one person, instead it is just the lack of members, and if we had 2 or more people on each station we could have been able to see that part of the rules or noticed the need for auto-mode. Other then that the competition turned out great, the drive system and strength of our bot worked 100% better than expected. We did not make it to the finals but in 32^nd out of 60 teams. This was far better than our first year of 58^th out of 59 teams.

I am worried for next year though. There are two things that must happen or the team will not survive. Sebastian and Ian who will both be running the team need to mature and take a larger role in the team, being a captain is not something that is easily done as I found out this year. I honestly do not think either of them can handle it at the moment. That is why I am planning to delegate it between the two. Besides that, they can’t be asked to perform their best when they are the only ones on the team. Currently there are three people on the team next year. This is not enough. Recruitment is a must; also more help from the school is definitely needed.

Robotics log 3

I have not posted a log since the start of the season; I have been amazingly busy with robotics. The season is now over, I want to quickly out line my next few blogs about for my exhibit. This blog will cover the season and what I learned from it. My next one which will be up soon will cover my written document, which I will talk more about in that blog but it is going to be a How-To guide for running a Robotics Team at FA for Future teams. Then my final blog I will post after or during the competition in Richmond later in March.

Anyways, at my last update we had just got our challenge and were starting to come up with designs. That first week we came up with a way to pick up the game balls and score with them, as well as a very strong drive system. Things were looking good at that point, by the second week is when things started to go downhill a bit. Unfortunately the captain from previous year gave designs for a chassis to the company that sponsors us. This caused some problems as the company had their own private work they had to do before they could start ours. This is understandable, but we could not speed them up and this lead us not to have the basic frame until much later than expected. 2nd 3rd and 4th weeks were not very productive as they should have been, we worked on the other components of the robot so we could quickly assemble them when we got the frame. Yet this was difficult because it was like trying to make parts for an object that you have no idea what it looks like. Also the problem of undedicated members started to arise, we started out with upwards of 25 members. I knew that half of them wouldn’t really be interested, unfortunately that number dropped down to 4. Those three weeks were definitely the most stressful of the whole season. I found out how much lack of sleep and stress can affect school classes.

The programming also proved to be problems which lead to me and Ian spending a few sleepless nights trying to figure out. I am however happy we fought with that then so we didn’t have to later once. Through these hardships we pressed on, luckily we were able to get the frame with one week left to ship. It was a good thing we did a lot of the prep work before hand so we didn’t have to mess around with doing the drawn out tasks when we didn’t have to. It only took us a weekend to finish modifying the frame then getting it up and running. I was really proud how the members that did come to the meetings put their serious gears into drive for that week; we got things done faster than I could have hoped for. After that weekend we started working on a new scoring mechanism. Since we didn’t get the frame on time we were not able to fully design a key component on the original plan. Once we were able to we found out that we could not get it made for another three weeks. Since this was way past the competition deadline, we came up with a much simpler design. All in all I think it was for the best as the previous design was very complicated and probably would require a lot of extra parts and man hours to work. There was also a good chance that the main advantage it had over the current one wouldn’t even prove very viable in a match. So we were able to finish that firing mechanism within the last week, after that we proceeded to test all of our systems and they all seem to be working as good as possible. The robot is now shipped with only a few minor things we need to do before the competition.

As I said earlier I am going to start working on my written document since the robotics season is now come to a close. I will talk about that more in my next blog.

Robotics log 2

This will be the last log pre-season, we have gotten quite a bit accomplished compared to previous years. We have designed and started building a six wheel drive system that uses 4 motors to power it. We also have developed a frame for this year’s robot that is extremely light; this will allow us to add more weight where it is needed once we know the game. As far as the structure of the team goes, I have got the email list cleaned up and developed a starter schedule for this year. I am having trouble finding parents to help volunteer for helping out, as of know the schedule is going to make the meetings cut into meal times. The team can’t afford to fund it, and I personally can’t afford to feed people. In previous years we had parents buy food for the meetings. I am hoping I can get this same kind of help again this year, we shall see how it goes.

We early ordered all of the electronics, and programming this is the first year that we were allowed to do this. It is because so much has changed from previous years as far as the controller, and programming goes. We haven’t been able to mess with the new things much; I got Ian to install the new programming software on his computer. I plan to make him in charge of that aspect of the build. As far as the programming goes, I am looking into using LabView instead of C+ for the programming. These are both two different types of ways to program the robot, in previous years we used C+. However, with the changes they have made this year it looks as if it will be better to try out this year. LabView is also what is being used across the world in modern engineering, so it will give the team members better skills for them to use later in life.

I am a little concerned for the lack of someone on the team who can properly use a CAD program, Matt Tinsley is suppose to have some idea how to use inventor. I haven’t heard from him in a while though so I don’t know how that is going to go. It is important for someone on the team to have an understanding of this so we can make designs that other companies can read and use to make us parts. Speaking of these companies… I really appreciate New Worlds support with funding us for this year. But it seems they are no longer interested in helping us make parts like they were in previous years. I hope we have not lost them for that because that will be a vital tool for us to use. The economic problems facing the countries have definitely taken a toll on the team, we have only one sponsor this year who was willing to donate money.

Things will be close this year, but I have a feeling that it will be great if we can get some key things down soon. Kickoff is the 3rd of Jan, which will be my next update.

Robotics log 1

This year I have many plans for the robotics team that will, hopefully, improve and streamline the process for years to come. I worked over the summer with Chris and many other engineers to finalize a design that we will try and use this year. Several engineers I talked to told me about a lot about some of the things they wish they had known about mechanical engineering and the sciences before they went into college. It is important that I know this so I can reinforce these goals during the build season. The whole point of why I want to keep the team going is to try and get more interest from people into the sciences. These type things are important and interesting to me, for one I am going into these fields also. I plan to make a page on the robotics website that is dedicated to different carrier paths that robotics can help you understand. I was thinking of asking Lauren for help on this as her project is related.

Specking of which, the website is been something that we have needed and wanted to start up for a long time. I finally started it up this year and it has turned into a lot more work then I first thought it would be. I am talking to a webmaster now who is teaching me a lot about PHP and other website design code. This has turned into being part of my learning experience; just because of how much I have learned. We will be able to use the website to communicate to other teams, and each other. Other people who are no longer on team can give their knowledge and info on questions. Example would be like me asking a question and Chris or Phil who are now in college could respond. The website is also a good gateway for other teams to see what we are all about. I hope to use it for recruitment this year as well.

At this moment we will start having weekly meetings in school to talk about some basic ideas. I will share what I did this summer with the team and get their input on the design concepts I have made. We will also work on getting new sponsors for this year’s competition. I got everyone’s schedule and worked out that C-day 2nd period is a time period that we can meet until the season starts up. Hopefully we will get more time once the new semester starts so I don’t have to talk about plans and sponsorship during building time. This is another thing that I want to revamp this year is our time spent. In previous years we spent most of the meeting time goofing off and planning. It wasn’t until the 3rd week we got our basic design done. I want to get all the design and plans done within the first week so we can dedicate the rest of the time into building and correcting any errors that come up.

We have a lot of work to do before the year really kicks off: prototype building, gaining sponsors, and getting more people involved with the team. I want to get the team excited to get stuff going now so that by the time season starts we will be ready for any challenge.