2.12.13-For San Diego!

Attendance


  • Mark
  • Fletcher
  • Evan
  • Hunter

Journal


Tasks

  • Discuss plans for how to get Inspire and do well at San Diego
  • Improve notebook
  • Tune IR autonomous

Reflections

This meeting was majorly based on making concrete plans for what we want to get done before we go back to San Diego.  There are a generally large amount of things to do, Especially concerning the notebook.  The list that we made for what to do and who will do it is as follows:

  • Slides on the Robot-Evan
  • Tune Autonomous-Hunter
  • Notebook Business Plan/Receipts-Mark
  • Design and Send out Invite Fliers to Grade Schools-Hunter
  • Samantha Fix-Evan
  • TeleOP Edit-Hunter and Fletcher
  • Notebook Source Code-Fletcher
  • Notebook Callouts (referring to the awards)-Mark, Everyone
  • Poster-Fletcher

We wrote all of these plans down and we will do our best to get these things done before San Diego.

Hunter and Fletcher were working on the autonomous of our robot because it definitely needed fixing.  Before they started, they had only really tuned the autonomous that went to the center goal which did work once at the competition but it did not help the autonomous going to the side posts.  But, since the center one still wasn’t perfect, they spend most the time we had left re-adjusting the center autonomous path.  Although not finished, we still made some progress on this, there is a lot more to do before San Diego Regionals.

The notebook probably leaves one of the biggest challenges of all.  We may not end up putting the drawer slides on the robot for lack of time.  We think that the best way to give us the best chance of getting the inspire award so we can qualify for nationals is to try to get the think award while enhancing our notebook to support all of the other awards as well.  This will be a big task done mostly by Mark and Fletcher, but with a little help from the rest of the team as well.

We have our work cut out for us.

2.7.13-So Much Work and so Little Time

Attendance


  • Mark
  • Hunter
  • Fletcher
  • Evan
  • Dante
  • Erik
  • Chris

Journal


Tasks

  • Get footage for a hand explainer video
  • Finish notebook
  • Finish Display
  • Driver Practice

Reflections

Today is our last day of meeting before the San Diego qualifier on Saturday.  But, just because it is the last meeting, doesn’t mean we don’t still have a ton to do.

First of all we had to finish up the notebook today.  This involved putting all of the finishing touches on all of the pages we have and also making sure our most recent meeting and competition are accounted for.  We have to get it done no matter what today so we can print it all out, all 150 pages of it.

Aside from that, we finished taking the last video today to put on our display we will have up on Saturday at the competition.  The display will be similar to the one from the qualifier we hosted last Saturday.  It will have an interactive screen that allows the viewer to choose and watch different videos.  This video will be about the hand, or bucket, that we have on our robot.

We also had to finish the physical display we will have behind the video display.  This has all of our biographies on it along with pictures of us as well as a little information about us and our robot.  With the display we will also have one-pagers that we will hand out to all the teams so they can know about our robot for outreach reasons and possible alliance selection if we don’t make it into the top four.

Lastly, we did a lot of driver practice.  The drivers, Hunter and Evan, both are still not perfect in their driving skills as was evident at the last competition.  Even on the match when we got 235 points, we had the potential to get many more because we wasted too much time on aligning the robot and trying to get a handle on all of the controls.  The driver practice we have done today has improved our drivers a lot and we feel very confident overall about the whole competition on Saturday!

 

 

1.30.13-Preparations for Saturday’s Competition

Attendance


  • Mark
  • Dante
  • Erik
  • Chris
  • Hunter
  • Evan
  • Fletcher

Journal


Tasks

  • Continue with drawings
  • Test robot
  • Update Notebook

Reflections

Today was a decent work day.  We continued to work on the drawings of the robot in its current state.  We also tested the autonomous which worked and also did some TeleOp testing to give the drivers practice and to address any problems with the hardware.  Other than that, we worked on the notebook and just basically kept up our usual operations.  We are also getting ready for the robotics FTC LA qualifier we are hosting on Saturday.  We are all staying after school until late tomorrow to help with the setup too.

1.29.13-On the Road to St. Louis

Attendance


  • Mark
  • Dante
  • Erik
  • Chris
  • Hunter
  • Evan
  • Fletcher

Journal


Tasks

  • Plan what we want to accomplish for San Diego
  • Autonomous testing and calibrating
  • Make videos that display the different features of our team
  • Make lots of drawings of the current robot
  • Add a page to the notbook called robot design
  • Assist the Kings and Queens becaus they have no computer

Reflections

The reason for the big gap between meetings is the fact that we did not meet during finals week so everyone could study and we didn’t meet the week after because we had the majority of that week off due to Martin Luther King day and furlough days.

We spent the first part of our meeting doing a considerable amount of planning for the San Diego championships.  Our main goals are to maintain the robot in its current state because we want to work on perfecting everything else, adding to the engineering book all of the drawings that we have done but never put in the notebook, perfecting the IR autonomous so it works every time, getting in as much driving practice as possible so we don’t have to waste time getting centered, etc. during the matches, improving our poster board and designing as well as implementing the projected display we plan to have that will be touch sensitive on whatever surface it projects on, and do our best to maintain the level of work habit and focus we have had throughout the year.

Evan added an additional two rollers to each side of the robot in the treads between the middle roller and the two outside rollers.  We did this in order to spread out the weight of the robot more so turning is faster and more efficient.

Hunter has been working on making videos and pictures that we will put in our projected display including nice pictures of each member individually.  We plan to organize the display on Thursday.

The Kings and Queens for some reason do not have a computer to program or run their robot so we have lent them one of our old computers to use for the rest of the year on the grounds that they return it, and also because we will always jump at chances to be gracious and professional.

Erik, Dante, and Chris have been working on making final drawings of the latest elements of the robot including the gears of the scissor lift, the scissor lift itself, the treads, the forklift, the hand, and the mechanism to move the hand up and down.  We are also planning to put all of these drawings together along with a compilation of all of the drawings from previous elements of the robot to show the evolution of all of the major parts of the robot.

Antelope Valley 1.12.13

Attendance


  • Mark
  • Hunter
  • Evan
  • Erik
  • Dante
  • Fletcher

Journal


Tasks

  • Get in one of the final alliances
  • Try to win most of our matches
  • Get our name out to all of the other teams
  • Offer help to any team who needs it
  • Have our IR autonomous work at least once
  • Get at least one tic-tac-toe on the top level
  • Pass all inspections
  • Bond as a team

Reflections

We passed all of our inspections with much ease. Our interview went very well too although Evan, Hunter, and Fletcher were still at inspection for the first half of the interview and they came for the second half. Everyone talked a good amount and the judges seemed very impressed.

Then came our first match. The autonomous was about to work but team 4625 pushed us out of the way with their blocking autonomous. Then, once TeleOp started, we lost connection almost immediately and we periodically throughout the match regained connection for a few seconds and lost the connection directly after. We lost this match 60 – 0

In the second match, our autonomous also nearly worked but it was off a little due to the ledge of the center goal area. We lost connection a little during the TeleOp but for the most part we were fine, although at the end of the match our mechanism for moving the hand up and down that’s mounted on the scissor lift didn’t lift up all the way so it made us not be able to pick up rings at the end. We won this match 80 –  30 and we were able to place two rings on the top row. Lunch break, and repairs for the robot. Since we lost connection again we knew it was our problem with the wires. We thought the problem might be that the Samantha was malfunctioning due to a wire problem that made the power to it waver frequently, so we investigated how we might fix that.

The Third Match: This was the most amazing robotics match we have ever participated in in all of robotics.  Our autonomous placed the ring on the IR column on the bottom row, in TeleOp, we did this:

Screen Shot 2013-01-13 at 3.41.24 PM

Come the End Game, we lifted our alliance partner’s robot (which had not been built for more than 5 hours) 17″, getting us the LA area’s highest lift and Getting us a final score of 235, an LA area high.

In the fourth match, we were devastated. Our robot didn’t work at all save one motor.  We had one motor serial that had the motor for our fork lift on it, and it worked, though we couldn’t use it because the forklift was against the wall.  We are yet to diagnose what went wrong.

In the fifth and final match, we did no better; we had the same problem.

We did our best, there’s only so much we can do, but we did score the highest score in LA which is pretty amazing.

We we ended up in 12th place and did not get chosen for a final alliance (though we were second choice for several teams), which is less than what we had hoped for.

When it came to awards time, they were setting the tournament computer up for the Promote award presentation and played the first couple of seconds, which happened to be the same first couple seconds as our Promote video.  Fletcher proceeded to have a freak-out, as he was quite excited, and got told to calm down since we hadn’t gotten the award yet.  After the Awards ceremonie got started, they played our Promote Video and announced us as the winners of the Promote Award.  The rest of the awards got announced and we were finalists for each of these:

  • Rockwell Collins Innovate Award
  • Connect Award
  • PTC Design Award
  • Motivate Award

This happens to be every judged award besides the Think award.  At the end the ceremonie, they announced the Inspire Award.  Third Place went to Simi Valley Robotics, second to Monrovia’s own Kings and Queens Team 4625, and first place Inspire Award went to us, the Suit Bots Team 4628!

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