More team Meetings

In the comments below can team members suggest another day other than Sunday that works with you schedule. If there is an available day, we can identify when we can have two meetings a week

9/28/09 Open Meeting review

At the open meeting we took the arm and arm tower off the robot and reasembled the main drive system. We also started prototyping the conveyor belt system.

i didnt know how to do this until now, read the comments on Mr. R's other post

read the title.

Team Name

In the comment section below, please suggest a team name. We will vote next meting.

Team Meeting Notes 9/27/09

We had a full team meeting tonight and focused on some brainstorming sessions about possible robot designs.  The team broke into two groups.  The first group (Jordy, Joe, Collin) focused on design concepts for robot mobility and baseball acquisition.  The second group (Scott, Sean, Brad and Connor) focused on baseball manipulation / magazine and the design of the shooting mechanism.

Mobility / Baseball Acquisition
We'll use the four wheel drive mechanics from last year's robot but modify the chassis to a "U" Shape.  The acquisition of the baseballs might be accomplished through the use of a draw bridge like mechanism that's controlled by a pair of servos.  There will also need to be servo controlled push arms to activate the levers that free the baseballs.  Total components are 2 electric motors and up to four servos.

Baseball Storage and Shooting
A potentially tricky aspect of the robot is where to store the baseballs once they have been gathered and how to manipulate them into a magazine for firing.  We have built a proto-type shooting mechanism using two spinning wheels (just like Hot-Wheels) but need to determine how to ensure a consistent throw distance.  The team's current thinking on loading is to use a conveyor belt-like structure to move the balls up and into a magazine that will feed the shooting device.  We may need to use a servo to regulate the loading of balls into the shooter.  Total components: 1-2 elec motors, 2 Lego motors, ? servos.

Next Steps:
(1) Scott and Matt will determine a build schedule between now and the 12/5 MD championships

(2) Jordy will make sure we understand what parts we can use to build the draw bridge and conveyor belt

(3) Sean will be working with labview to get a basic mobility program working

Next team meeting, Sunday 10/4 from 6-9pm

Team 3113: FTC Robotics Blog

The purpose of this blog is to help our team compete in the 2009 First Tech Challenge Robotics Competition. We're hoping to use this blog to facilitate communication and help organize our design efforts.  FTC is a High School level competition were participants are required to build a robot from a standard kit to accomplish a series of tasks.  This year's competition involves the collection and shooting of plastic balls into different targets.  It looks like fun.

There are several rules for using this blog:

(1) Safety

Please only use first names when discussing yourself or others on the blog. Internet security is no joke and everyones safety is more important than the competition. Please use all of the rules you have learned in School about internet safety.

(2) Photos

No photo's of team members faces can be posted

(3) Use of the Blog
This blog is intended to be used to facilitate idea sharing and communication so all posts need to be on-topic.  Any posts for non related items will be deleted by your's truly.

(4) I do hope we can use this blog to compete with other teams so always be both respectful and helpful to other teams questions.  The goal of the competition is to foster idea growth and camaraderie not just to win.