Practice update: 11/22/10

A lot of progress was made on the mobility programming - through the use of exponentials Holden, Andrew and Sean have designed a drive program that has multiple speeds - fast for moving around / going over the mountain and slow for finesse driving (approaching the baton dispensers and rolling goals.

The program will still need to be tweaked but the team made great progress

The ground clearance issue we had at the last scrimmage seems to be fixed as the bot easily goes over the mountain.  We still need to reinforce the design to withstand future practice rounds and the competition itself.

Arm Replaced by Conveyor Belt

After a lot of unsuccesful testing and the "smoking" of one DC motor, the team decided to replace the pivot arm with a conveyor belt drive system.  We think this has the following advantages and disadvantages over the arm design:

Advantages
- A lot more stable as the bulk of the conveyor belt is fixed in place - less strain on the engine and less chance that it can come loose or out of alignment as the 'bot bumps around on the field.
- The conveyor allows for some additional baton storage - which will be helpful as storing the batons from the low goal was proving difficult

Disadvantages:
- The arm design that was replaced had a dual function to push down the balance bridge.  That functionality will need to be replaced with some servo's and swing arms, which may add complexity to our design and, more importantly, the programing

November 7, 2010

AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM CONNOR: I WILL BE STEPPING DOWN FROM BEING THE ENGINEERING JOURNALIST TEMPORARILY BECAUSE OF SOME SCHEDULE CONFLICTS, I WILL BE COMING BACK SOON BUT JARED WILL BE TAKING MY PLACE.
People present: Grant, Holden, Brad, James, Scott, Andrew, Jared, Mr. Riedy, Mr. Lanterman, Mr.Pontious, Mr.Parry, Sean.

Brad, Sean, and Holden are doing the strategy for the autonomous period.
All other teams are working on widening, and wiring the robot. We are also building prototype baton baskets.
Programming- Working on strategy during autonomous and all the code for telop (RC) is working. They are also working on code for the autonomous period.
AROUND THIS TIME I THINK OUR TEAMS NEED TO START COMMUNICATING BECAUSE WE HAVE EXCELLED SO FAR IN SUCH SHORT TIME. SO START POSTING ON THE BLOG, YOUR IDEAS, PLANS, AND OPINIONS. TALK TO OTHER TEAMS AND START CONNECTING OUR LITTLE CREATIONS INTO A MAGNIFICENT #1 ROBOT!

Here's a picture from the 11/7 session where we are rebuilding the Robot's frame to make it both a bit wider and more rigid.

November 4 Meeting Report

The meeting tonight was very successful. On programming, Holden and Brad worked on

a program for a dispensing arm and a program for the baton manipulation device. Baton Manipulation, including Jared, James, and Logan, worked on a superstructure, or a frame, for the robot. They also prototyped a baton scoring arm. This was starting as a thing with a bucket on the end used to hold batons. this changed to the same plan from the bottom, which was prototyped and named by Logan as "a Claw". Finally, Jared added a different end, which allowed it to dispense into one of the rolling goals. This is the prototype in the picture. He calls this the "T-Bar"

October 28, 2010 Meeting Report

Today we made some progress on the robot and on Samantha. Jared, Scott, and Logan worked on the robot's baton system and made it better. The Programming team; Brad, Sean, and Holden; tested the tele-op program using joysticks and servos. Connor wasn't here to do the blog, so Jared updated the info instead.

The Baton Manipulation team had a couple of problems. On the wheels, they had a stuck gear. This would remove a lot of mobility to get over the mountain. They had to remove a gear to find out what gear it was, and then lubricated the gear. Finally, they replaced the gear they removed.

They also found that a gear was to low, so they inserted a flat piece of metal to raise the gear. That fixed the issue.

Mr. Lanterman helped with the Baton Manipulation team, and Mr. Reidy helped with Baton Manipulation and Programming

Tonight we had pizza provided by the Reidys and sugar cookies provided by the Lantermans.

The next meeting will be sometime on Friday, November 5th, when we have off school.

Have a safe and Happy Halloween!

Field Components

Our practice field is shaping up nicely.  Thanks to Andrew and his father we have the center part of the field completed.  Jim and his father finished three baton dispensers and the walls for the field were also completed.  All we need now is to complete a few rolling goals and we'll be good to go.

A lot of progress was made last session with initial designs for the wheels and baton capture mechanism being thought through and prototyped.  I should point out that the Scouts idea for wheel design proved to be superior to the parent's suggestions!

Here's a rough picture of the baton capture device - nice proto-typing by Jim P.

Meeting Notes-10/18/09

Attended by: Jordy, Colin, Sean, Brad, Connor, and Matt

Tonight we didn't accomplish as much as we would have liked, but we still got a fair amount done. We started working on the actual arm with the new design, and added a servo to the end. We also looked at the gearing for the arm, and decided we would have to change it.

Also, we agreed that each team member should do some individual research on what other teams are doing to try and get new ideas, or refine our own.

To the team members that couldn't make tonights meeting: Feel better!

Meeting Notes-10/4

Meeting:10/4. "6"-8:30

Attended by: Scott, Matt, Sean, Jordy, Joe, Colin, Brad, Mr. T, Mr. G, and Mr. R

Today we physically worked on the robot. Scott, Brad, and Conner worked on builing a prototype of the arm. They expanded the idea of a shooting arm, and they made progress on making a working model.

While they were working on the arm, Matt, Joe, Sean, Jordy worked on the base of the robot. We decided to basically keep the same gearing of the wheels, as that design proved sucessful last year. We decided however to change the width of the robot and worked on making the base bigger.

Sean, Joe, and Scott also worked a small amount on the programming, mostly going over the program and explaining how it works.

All in all tonight was a somewhat sucessful, productive meeting.

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