In terms of drive, it looks like bumps aren’t nearly as difficult as we first thought. A simple 4wd kitbot easily clears the bumps. We’re also looking into mecanum drive so we can line up for goals… assuming mecanum actually behaves itself better than it has in the past (where strafing was rather jerky).

We had some success with a surgical tubing powered kicker, which we’re working on automating (we can’t exactly put Doyung or me in the robot to pull back!)  After lots and lots of testing with different tensions and striking angles and many other parameters which I really don’t want to list out, we could easily clear two bumps.  Check it out:

On the programming front, we have camera tracking of a vision target.  Amazing!  Hopefully it’ll work on the robot…  We also have the benefits of a (nearly) full sized vision target, printed out complement’s of Blair’s Mr. Kaluta, who has the run of Blair’s poster printer (bought with money the school won from Intel STS over the years, I suspect).  Thanks, Mr. Kaluta!

Our electricians have 2 working electronics boards, which lets us use one board for programming experiments while the other board is used to test drive frames.  This should solve a lot of problems we had last year regarding competition for cRio time.  The second board is ugly.  Very ugly.  Extremely ugly.  The members who wired the board were under instructions to make it “as ugly as possible.”  Why?  So that we have no interest in putting it on the final robot.  An electronics board should be designed to fit with the robot, not the robot designed to fit with the board (a-la 2008) , the board added as an afterthought (a-la 2009), or (god forbid) holes drilled in the board so critical elements can be mounted (a-la 2007).  Hopefully, we’ll have none of these issues.

We also have a super-secret awesome plan for finale.  The idea is also between somewhat and completely insane, so no details yet, but I will tell you we plan on scoring 5 bonus points, so long as one of our alliance members’ robots can drive [evil laugh?]

We’re taking tomorrow off (school is closed) and then we’ll have a busy week with both midterm exams and prototyping going on.  Feel free to drop in on us if you’re in the area.

Go 449!

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…

This week, the programming subteam tested and modified the acceleration code and wrote the three-wheeled robot code for cRIO. Other team members redesigned the alternate shooter and continued to perfect the four-wheeled prototype’s frame and the harvester system, which can now load and dump orbitz balls. The backerman prototype was also tested and proved itself useful. The scouting subteam worked on designing the team’s t-shirts for this year and writing up information for several FIRST awards.