Posts Tagged Battle o’ Baltimore

Success and Failure at the 2009 Battle o’ Baltimore

Aug 26

Posted by Eric in Competition

With the internal controversy surrounding 449’s attendance at the Battle o’ Baltimore, I’m glad to say that we did in fact attend. Summer events are always hard, with most people on vacation or simply not motivated enough to make the 45 minute drive from DC to Baltimore.

The goal of this offseason event was to give the younger members of our team—the rising juniors and sophomores—a jump start into running the robot without us old farts. The power’s been in our hands too long, and we’ve gotten too comfortable being in control.  The drive chain is loose? Not my problem. Here, have a wrench. It might not be the right size. Engineers have got to fend for themselves in the wild world of robotics.

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First “Build” Meeting of the 2009 Offseason

Aug 6

Posted by Eric in General

“If this explodes, we’re going to have video of your epic demise.”

So commented one team member on my attempt to run a CIM motor off an 18v drill battery using 22 guage wire.

Such was the atmosphere at our third summer meeting, hosted at my house, in preparation for the Battle o’ Baltimore. Our main goal was to replace the robot’s sub-par shooter with a simple hopper and roller with which to “dump” orbit balls.

The dumper design was considered during competition season and mostly built (as our witholding allowance) but was scrapped in favor of a catapult. We thought it would be a good idea to give it try at the Battle. After negotiating our way into the backroom at school, we collected the dumper scraps so the dumper could have a second chance at life. Disassembling the shooter was done quickly, and resurrecting the dumper was not difficult. 80% of the work was completed the first day.

The four people who decided they didn’t want to go home for the night slept with the robot in the basement. We were back at work 10 AM Sunday morning. A few bent pieces of flat stock and more than a few zipties later, the dumper was in working condition. For the rest of the day, the hum of tools and robot work was accompanied by the clatter of pool balls and sharp pings of air hockey pucks. A few mechanical bugs were worked out, which entailed a new gearbox and mounting plate. Some minor adjustments ensured that our rear wheel chain would stop ejecting itself.

Most students floated between game-playing and robot-building, but some chose to work on other projects. The fate of the programming subteam was discussed at length, and design work was done on the rumored “arm” that will be the pinnacle of our training program. Some people even found time to cut the pieces for a second modular battery charger.

While the bulk of the work is over, we will be meeting here again this Saturday. This time, the focus will be on the robotic arm and offseason projects, as well as some administrative work for the upcoming school year.

And just so you stop wondering, my ad-hoc wiring job didn’t explode.

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Battle o’ Balitmore vs Robotic Arm

Jul 27

Posted by Ben in Competition

So to go to the Battle o’ Baltimore this year, we’re going to strip the top of our robot and replace the catapult (which worked intermittently at best) with a new dumper design that we’ll spend the next few weeks building.

We also need, statistically speaking, about .5 more people to be interested in going to Battle o’ Baltimore to go (take the chance of a person going as the number of people; two people who are 50-50 for going or not count as 1 person going together. It works.) The reason for needing more people is simple; drivers shouldn’t have to work in the pit full time and vice versa (”That was a tough match, time to take a break… oh wait, I can’t because I have to fix the robot.”)

The other thing we need is a new coach. I’ve coached at competitions the last two years, but I’ll be out of the state at the time of the competition. I apparently have an uncommon idea of what coaching should be (compared to other coaches, not compared to the people I coach): the coach shouldn’t ever yell, except to be heard. The players will do a good enough job punishing themselves for mistakes, and don’t need you to rub it in. Whoever replaces me as coach will have to show him/her self to be calm in general (or at least whenever I’m watching).

I’ve noticed that Bo’B always seems to be rather time consuming; prepping everything, designing, building, programming (plus, I’m not too sure about the new NI stuff… last time we tried to download it took several hours before our laptop would talk with the cRio). Granted, Battle o’ Baltimore is pretty fun, but it always means less time for other things.

This year, I wanted to have a robotic arm built, one of those 5 axis contraptions that every robotics team should have. Scott mentioned this arm in the previous post (about our first summer meeting). Designing it would be an exercise in spatial thinking, CAD, and working with different motors for our younger members, building it would take precise machining that most of us could use some practice with. But the best part would be using it to train brand new electronics and programming members every year. And wouldn’t it be great if some programmer were bored and, say, taught it how to bring us sodas? Oh… and did I mention how awesome it would be?

Anyway, we should end up designing and building something like that regardless of whether we go to Bo’B (it just might run longer into the start of school), but this brings me to what I really, really want to build: a motorized joint that is in a feedback loop with a joint on a human (knee would be most useful), such that it enhances motions of the joint. Systems of powered joints like this exist already, and allow people (read: “soldiers”) to carry people on their back. Without noticing any weight. We probably couldn’t get that sophisticated, but you have to admit it would be cool to try. Maybe next summer…

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Meeting #1 at Katherine’s House (July 20)

Jul 20

Posted by Scott in General

We met – for the first time this summer – at Katherine’s house yesterday, to take apart an old robot and discuss pre-season activities, particularly training.

All of the rookies present felt that the training programs for the various subteams needed to be changed, if not drastically altered. All the subteams are going to be having a more hands-on approach to training in the coming year. We will dropping the long, theoretical lectures during which people were actually taking notes (always a bad sign) and moving to short, basic how-tos followed by now-dos.

The sophomore training program will be more focused on designing the parts than it will be on actual construction. In addition, there will most likely be less of a distinction between people who are in electronics and people who are in one of the mechanics subteams. People will go to whichever activities suit them without being limited by their subteam choice. This does not apply so much to Programming and Teque subteams, which are sort of “in a different world”.

Many ideas for the specifics of training came up and were shot down. The rookies will not be building a cart as their pre-season project (too complicated). They will not be building complete robots and then competing in a mini-game (not enough time). The mechanics training program will most likely be separate from the electronics and programming training program. One idea that was not really shot down was that we might have a robotic arm built, and then re-wire and re-program it every year.

Also floated was the idea of competing in the Battle o’ Baltimore again this year. This one was generally accepted. The decision to use LabView, a graphical programming language, instead of C or C++, was maintained.

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Battle of Baltimore

Aug 13

Posted by Ben in Uncategorized

Saturday (August 12, The day of the real matches)

Today we won almost every match and scored an average of four to five tubes in each of our matches. Throughout the day we fluctuated among the top seeded teems, including a stint as the #1 seeded team. At the end of the qualifying matches we made it to the elimination rounds as the fourth place seeded teem. After choosing team 1894 as our alliance member (as there were only 20 teams and 8 alliances we only got to choose one other team) we won our quarterfinal. Unfortunately, even with an addition of team 768, our alliance was unable to withstand the might of the first place seed team’s alliance (teams 25, 888, and 1893), and we were unable to progress to the finals. Though we did not make it to the finals we are extremely pleased with how well we did and have decided that we should start attending a second US FIRST Regional Competition in the hopes that we will be able to be as together at such an event as we were at the Battle ‘O Baltimore.
Pictures will be up soon.

Friday (August 11, The day of the practice rounds)

After making a few last minute modifications on our robot we packed up our stuff and headed out to Baltimore for some practice rounds. (The real matches start tomorrow.) As not many teams were practicing we had the opportunity to get in a good deal of practice with our new driver. By the end of the day our drivers were a well-coordinated teem and we had scored a lot and found very few fixes to make. Our new gripper was very effective in grabbing tubes and hanging them on the rack and we expect it to continue to be tomorrow. Although we did not get a chance to test our ramp we do not foresee any problems with it tomorrow either. In short, things look good for tomorrow!

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Saturday August 4 (Putting the finishing touches to the 2007 robot)

Aug 4

Posted by Ben in Uncategorized

For those who have not been around lately, the Blair Robot Project is participating in the Battle of Baltimore, an off season event based on the 2007 FIRST Robotics Challenge. In preparation for the competition, the team has decided to rebuild both the ramp and the gripper of the 2007 robot. We hope that these changes will enable us to be more effective and cut down on the overall weight of the robot.

The competition is going to be held on the 10th and 11th of August. For more information on the Battle of Baltimore, you can visit this link.

On another note, we also held a bake sale over the summer. Like our first it was successful (between the two we have made around $1,300.)

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