Aug 23:Full Robot Testing - YES!

Well, after completing wiring and a small programming adjustment we tested a complete, full 1414A robot today and with just a little optimization work on the roller mouth spacing and tensioning it looks like we've got viable solution on our hands.

There will still be some more mechanical tweaking work to do with our polycarbonate, mounting the backup battery, then sensor mounting and autonomous work, but our early results are VERY encouraging.

1414B and C are also moving right along with their build outs and we're well on our way to being ready for fall meetings and competition season. Bring it on!

Aug 17 Meeting: 1414A is complete!

We completed assembly of 1414A today and, after wiring completion, we'll be ready for full scale field testing and optimization work next week.  Teams B and C continue their "build out" work and all is going well.

Look for pictures and video after our two meetings next week.

Aug 16: Optimizing A, beginning B&C

Today's work was all about optimizing our "final" design on the 1414A Chassis, which now includes not only cutting down excess metal, optimizing roller accumulator and lift, but now also incorporating our "left over" motor in our H Drive confiduration.  We had some ups and downs along the way, and we put in a little overtime, but we made good progress today and you all should be seeing "complete" robot video soon!

While our 1414A crew was busy with this, our B and C teams began cutting metal for their accumulators and lifts.  Again, slow today, but we made progress and should be picking up speed with our work from here forward now that our model (1414 A) is all but complete.

Aug 3: Exhaustion Testing

Our August 3 meeting included a full discussion on decisions for the accumulator and lift, lots of drive practice,and the biggest milestone was that we finished all accumulator and lift systems on 1414A well enough to run full exhaustion testing successfully.  See for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5nb-yjJtpc&feature=youtu.be

Conclusions:
1. Two motor lift with latex tubing assist is plenty - no need for another motor (which we can now use for the H Drive if we so choose)
2. Proper tensioning of flexible mouth opening for accumulator along with optimizing roller 
position are keys for smooth accumulation of sacks.

3. For the second year in a row: Spring/latex tubing assist lifts rocks!

With this, we were able to order parts for complete design work on all of our robots.  Woot!

Aug 1: Inspiration Stop #2 R.U.COOL

Today was our second trip of the summer, this time to the Rutger's University Coastal Ocean Observation Lab (or "R.U.COOL") with the UP Robotics FLL students and families along as well to see first hand the most advanced ocean observatory in the world AND arguably the world's most foremost underwater robotics program. 

Our host for the day was Tina Haskins, a young lady who spent her high school days loving AP Biology class and being on the school's robotics team.  Now in her mid twenties, she's a biological oceanographer and a robotic glider technician who just happens to be part of the first team EVER to "fly" an underwater robotic glider across the atlantic ocean - sampling the ocean along the way.  That robot, "The Scarlet Knight" or "RU27" is now in the Smithsonian.

During our visit our students got to see the glider lab, the ocean observatory, the ballasting tank, met a bunch of awesome people, and got to learn nomenclature of the robotic gliders while assembling them.

In short, an INSPIRING day thanks to R.U. COOL!

More photos from the trip:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/uprobotics/sets/72157630860615500/
Video of student glider assembly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evjTKmbaWAs

July 31: Getting so Close!

Today we completed our first iteration of the 4-bar linkage lift system - with a third motor and no surgical tube assist yet.  We were able to integrate the roller and tested the accumulator with minimally positive results.  Conclusions: Roller position, flexible mouth opening tubing, and amount of non-slip pad on roller all need optimization.  Video of some of the testing:

July 20: Roadblocks

It was bound to happen.  A meeting where most things went wrong.  We made little progress today on manipulation systems, spending the bulk of the meeting trying to debug a control system issue with 1414C's robot.  In the end, we learnedthat the joystick is not working.  Resetting, reinstalling firmware doesn't help and some of these processes don't currently complete properly.  After exhaustive forum searching and attempts, our preliminary conclusion is the we may have damaged the joystick from dropping it and there's a good chance it needs to be replaced.  Ughhhh ... yet all experiences, both good and bad, are something we can learn from, and we will use this as a way to refocus all of our team members on how to best handle equipment and we'll move forward all the wiser for it.

July 19: Positive Progress, but slow...

One of the real human parts of a project as complex as competition robot design and development is that things always move more slowly than everyone wants them to, however our progress remains positive and we're getting close to an integrated design.   Today we were far enough along to do some lift testing for the arm under similar-to-competition weight/mass/time conditions.  Conclusion: we definately need to add surgical tube assist to out 4-bar linkage lift and possibly need to add a third motor too.

July 13: Powered Roller Testing

No driver training today as we focused on hands-on design work throughout our time.  The most significant milestone of the day was our first powered roller testing for our accumulation system after the roller was wrapped in no slip pad.  We tested handheld using the temporary frame mount.  Not too flashy a set of tests, but they did show that we should continue forward with this system.  Here's a short video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TChcbBz9Pjk

Looking forward to getting all of the systems integrated together.

July 10 Meeting: Back at it

Today arm/lift work continued for our four bar linkage as well as work on the accumulator roller and driver practice continued as well.  Arm/lift is now powered by two motors and a 7:1 gear reduction (84:12) which was the determined target ratio based on earlier lift testing with our Gateway robot.  The accumulator roller prototype is now mounted to a temporary frame for initial testing purposes.  In all, one of those solid workmanlike meetings thatwill certainly pay off in the long run.

Why Bother? July 9th @ Drexel

In the grand scheme of things, other than competing to "win", why would a team bother participating in VRC?  Simple ... so students can learn and be inspired to consider pursuing a career in the STEM fields.  Well, competing alone without knowing what opportunities exist won't get it done.  So this summer we scheduled a series of visits to expose our students to the possibilities that lie ahead of them.

Today, that meant a visit to Drexel University's College of Engineering in Philly, where we learned about the overall Engineering program at Drexel, visited robotics and race car team labs, got a guided tour of the nanophotonics operation, and saw presentations from a variety of the engineering departments.  Special thanks to Weena Doyle for coordinating our visit and to all the Drexel staff members and students who took time from their schedules for us.  Our visiting students and parents certainly good a great inside look at the Drexel experience, which serves as a great motivator for us all.

July 6: Manipulator Design Execution Begins

Today we made a VERY important decision:
To design, build, and fully prototype of lift and accumulation systems on one of our team's chassis, while we continue driver practice on the other two.  From this point until these systems are complete students will switch out between designing and building to driver practice and back again. 

With our remaining meeting time we were able to assemble our full set of troughs (thanks to an anonymous donation), get in a lot of full field driver practice, begin build on our FRC-style roller for accumulation, and - borrowing a little from past New Zealand type 4-bar linkages - get the key elements of our lift in place.

July 3rd Meeting: Driver Competition

With the 4th of July holiday upon us, we decided to suspend design work and focus on our driver skills by setting up a competition.  Each student had to flawlessly complete a sepentine course without touching sacks or driving off of the tile surface and set a time.  It was fun, it was competitive, and after more than an hour of students refining their skills and lowering the best time to beat the coach posted the best time of all.  However, the important part of the day was finding one more way of refining driver skill while having fun.  Mission accomplished, happy 4th!

Blog Info Blackout Lifted: Sorry!

We know some folks like following our blog and it's been a little over a month since our last post.  Sorry, sometimes life happens and we get behind.  However, all of our archived info is ready to roll out and I'll start putting up blog posts just as if they had been made in a more timely fashion, covering meetings on July 3, 6, 10, 13, 19, 20, 31, and Aug 3 as well as reports on trips to Drexel Engineering and the Rutgers Univ Coastal Ocean Observatory Lab's Underwater Robotics Program.

-Kressly

June 27 meeting: Accumulator Prototypes

The teams were VERY productive at our June 27 meeting.  Off the bat we continued driver practice and training with 20 minutes of object avoidance.  The team members are beginning to get comfortable controlling their robots and, even at this early stage, you can start to see how the commitment to driver training is going to pay off.

 

After that the bulk of the meeting was spent on building 3 accumulator prototypes for testing.  The crew got ALL of the work done in our time frame and we learned a ton.  1414A prototyped a polycarbonate ramp (we knew we wanted polycarbonate sliding under the sacks based on early meeting testing) with an "FRC-style" roller made from high strength gears, threaded beam, and covered in no-slip pad. 1414B prototyped a polycarbonate ramp with tank tread rollers doing the collecting. After initial testing this crew also added VEX foam to see if coefficient of friction could be improved.  1414C prototyped a polycarbonate ramp with just tank tread sprockets doing the active collecting.  Here's a quick video showing some of our testing:

From prototype testing here's what we learned:

1. Simple use of tank tread sprockets does not provide enough friction to gather sacks.
2. We liked what the tank tread rollers could do after covered in foam, but the weren't as efficient as we would like and this will be a heavier system to lift.  The speed at which this diameter spun was highly desirable though.
3. The FRC-Stlye Roller/non-slip pad looks to be our best option for sure! We're going to proceed with this design, but look for ways to speed up the intake using a favorable gear ratio.

4. All of our prototypes were single-motor powered and did not overheat during testing.  Good news, because we'll be using two motors on the real system and it seems as though we won't have to overwork the system.

5. The "mouth" opening between the roller and polycarbonate with have to be of a flexible distance in order to accommodate sacks in multiple orientations with shapes changing while accumulating as well as dealing with sacks on top of each other.

6. Since the polycarbonate slides so easily under sacks we will want the polycarbonate to contact the sacks BEFORE the roller contacts the sacks to help ensure smooth accumulation.

Looking forward to our next meeting when we figure out arm/lift/linkage geometry and ratios!

-Kressly

June 20 & 22 meetings: drivetrains & inspiration

At our June 20 & 22 meetings the last parts of functional drivetrain work were completed and some lengthy testing and driver training commenced.  Driver training thus far is comprised of "follow the leader" exercises with robots oriented in varied ways in relationship to each driver and some "obstacle avoidance" training has also begun to avoid sacks we cannot push and/or do not want to pick up.  While these types of activities seem somewhat insignificant, these are the initial steps in a steady regimen of driver and operator practice designed to have each of our drive teams know how to pilot their robots instinctively and as flawlessly as possible in the heat of competition.  Thus, this early and persistent focus on the interaction and relationship between robot and human is every bit as important as a hitter in baseball getting in tee and batting cage work or an artist practicing his/her craft until perfected.

Here is  a string of three videos that demonstrate some of our follow the leader activities:

With some extra time we had at these two meetings we discussed three accumulator designs we will start prototyping at our next meetings and the probability of using a 4-bar linkage to life sacks into scoring position. 

Lastly, for inspiration, we also viewed the documentary Atlantic Crossing: A Robot's Daring Mission
One of my former students is a part of this incredible team that is revolutionizing ocean exploration:
http://wh.rutgers.edu/collaborations/atlantic-crossing

Looking forward to see how things progress!
-Kressly

June 7 Meeting: Focus on the drivetrains

No frills at this evening's meeting it was 90 minutes all about getting as close to drivetrain functionality for all three teams as possible.  1414A has a fully completed and functional drivetrain, 1414B & C both had a little more work to do as their new electronics needed paring and firmware upgrades along with mechanical assembly work.  Both of these teams completed paring the electronics and 1414B also completed the firmware upgrade.  B will be up and running after completing motor wiring while 1414C just needs to wire and upgrade firmware and software.  Tonight, all the teams helped each other, learned about labeling motors by port numbers, and shared responsibility for getting work done.

In the end, all teams celebrated a solid effort taking turns test driving the complete 1414A drivtrain:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z90kJpvzhU

Photos from the meeting can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/uprobotics/sets/72157630077752494/

See you all in two weeks, when we switch over to daytime/twice a week meetings.

May 31 meeting: Drivetrain build begins

After a few weeks off to digest our findings from Stubots, contemplate our brainstorm, and prepaint aluminum for our three teams (see pic here: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7245/7315321084_0aa7ba754d.jpg blue=1414A, gold=1414B, white=1414C), we got back at it last evening to focus on our desired drivetrain characteristics and begin the build.

Essentially our findings concluded our teams would design a nearly identical drivetrain to Kwelaha from last year.  We feel that a Sack Attack robot with these drive characteristics can be very effective.  Zero turning radius, omni-directional capabilities, and familiarity for returning drivers and pit crew members all help us arrive at an easily-controlled, agile, maneuverable robot.  We did have discussions about a shorter drivtrain to allow for a robot-wide accumulator later, but concerns over tipping with an arm elevated led us to build a full front 8-wheel H drive.  We can always remove material and wheel later if we choose, but if we cut expensive aluminum now, it would cost us dearly to add back on later. 

We also determined our Sack Attack robot drivetrains would have slightly different characteristics:
1. the chassis has to be as close to the floor as possible - not allowing sack under/in the wheels
2. we need more space in front of the front wheels to be able to add "angular encouragement" of sacks to the accumulator (should we keep the full front).
3. With three teams and the budget tight, we need to conserve parts even more so than we did last year.

With all of that in mind our teams worked hard, helping each other as needed and got three drivetrains more than 80% done.  The tachquiwi concept is alive and well with this group!

We concluded the meeting with our engineering notebook entries - so far we're doing a MUCH better job at this than last year!  Special thanks to our visitor Alex Arocho, a Temple Univ. engineering student who may be helping us out from time to time. Thanks, Alex!

We also uploaded all of our May meeting photos to our gallery, here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uprobotics/sets/72157629999817456/ Enjoy.

We hope to have all three drivetrains running next week, so check back.

Stubots, Field Tests, Brainstorm: May 8, 2012 Meeting

The May 8 meeting was pretty fast paced and the 1414 teams got a lot done. First we started with "stubots" -  human simulation of the game, then debrief to see what we can learn about game play and strategy. We also did some field and lift testing with our existing robot.  Then moved into brainstorm lists for the "what" portion of our process (not thinking of "how" yet).

Here's the corresponding video we shot at the meeting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc8CzrhfuBs

From Stubots autonomous play we learned:
- Bonus sack in high goal is biggest one score value
- Putting as many sacks in trough as possible seems easiest
- Moving entirely in a straight line (to sack pile of 5), then goals, is least complicated
- With only 15 seconds of auto, going out and coming back for instructions/repositioning more than once is highly unlikely.
- Don't forget about additional bonus sacks under troughs
- Down back wall line to "other" tile than reposition is possible

From Stubots driver control play we learned:
-Because of proximity of all troughs, descoring / rescoring troughs is viable
-It can get crowded at troughs
-trough is likely the goal to score most in
-score in high goal "when available"
-low goal is last option
- parking is good, but scoring additional sackscan be worth more in many cases
-questions: How much can a robot hold? Are sacks obstacles?

From our brief robot testing we learned:
- flat polycarbonate slides easily under sacks and sack when driven on ARE obstacles
- our existing arm/lift (from Gateway) - 5:1 reduction, 3 motors, surgical tube assist - bogged down in less than 20 seconds with both six and four sack tests.  Conclusion - the density of these sacks will put significantly more stress on a lifting mechanism than the Gateway pieces as there will be more of them toward the end of the moment arm.

Next our three teams were split up into their small groups to list all known autonomous and driver controlled strategies, then they were shared with the whole group, here:

Lastly our teams brainstormed what they would like to see in our robot features, and the consensus view came out like this:

Drivetrain - same agile, multi-directional as last year.  Need to test to see if we can "chop" front of chassis back in favor of max wide manipulator as long as robots won't tip over - need to test. Also need to skirt/protect robot chassis so no sacks are driven upon.

Manipulator -
- accumulator of some kind
- scoring in trough and high goal is more desired than scoring low
- Trough has an immense capacity as compared to high goal - also more accessible
be able to descore trough, then high, then low.

Our next meeting is not until the end of May.  Before then we may  getting together to paint chassis metal and perhaps advance our thinking in these areas.

Best wishes to all teams, and see you here in a few weeks.

-Kressly

Season kickoff: great room & a great group

May 3, 2012 meeting - Game On!
Here is all the info on this year's game, Sack Attack:
http://www.vexforum.com/wiki/index.php/Sack_Attack
This evening VRC 1414 met for the first time in the 2012-13 season. This season we have a new meeting place donated by the UPV library. This is because this year we have expanded from 1 team to 3. We have new students from all over the area participating this season. We started off our first meeting by reading over the 10 program principles (to be discussed more in a later post) and the Sack Attack game rules and getting to know each better through introductions (name, where we're from etc.). We briefly discussed vocab and gear reduction along with filling out team engineering notebook by filling it out under a 3 stage loop: Identify need, complete task, and assess/evaluate.  Our homework for next meeting is to read robot rules, review vocabulary, and work with the Stack Attack App. We're all looking forward to the season!

 

See you next week for "Stubots" and the beginning of brainstorming!

-Jake K.

2011-2012 Gateway Season Officially Ends for 1414

On Tues March 6, team members were each presented with a keepsake from the season:

We also did a season debrief and put together a plan for 2012-13. All team members had a chance to write and present their thoughts along with some discussion.  They helped to make some tough decisions as we move forward and handled themselves with the same enthusiasm and professionalism they have all year long. I'm very proud of this group, not for winning tournaments, but rather for how they've grown - both as individuals and as a team.

Look for the blog to start up again in May when Teams 1414A, 1414B, and 1414C get together for the first time to tackle the 2012-13 challenge! Until then, enjoy a few looks back at our year.

-Kressly

True Autonomous Self-Awareness: Jan 30 meeting

Milestone for VRC1414: Sensor package fully functional in autonomous, thus Kwelaha becomes somewhat self-aware for the first time ever which is a huge leap forward for our team.

Here is our first video footage (sorry for the bad light/grainy footage) of Kwelaha exhibiting self-aware behaviors. Below that is a photo of the sensor package for a better idea of what we're doing - simple and effective.  Three bumper switches in rear of robot allow for push button on the fly selection of subroutines, encoder on arm joint measures relative arm position, and one bumper switch in front of robot detects the edge of 30" goals. No more voltage dependence in autonomous mode!

We're looking forward to more practice and February competition.

Long time no post: Nov Competition, Review, Jan Improvement

So, last I posted in the VRC1414 blog Casey, Mitch, Bryan, Jonas, Justin, and Ben were all prepared for our first event in November.  As reported via facebook and twitter, our rookie team performed very well for the first time out at the Haverford Stampede on Nov 19.  We were the number two overall seed losing only one qualifying match, were event champs with 3057, and 169B as alliance partners, and also won the Build Award.  All six team members were very good in their roles the first time out for sure!  Below is a photo at the conclusion of the event together with our partners and the rest of the photos from the day can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uprobotics/sets/72157628058398433/

Even though our performance exceeded expectations, we certainly were able to identify places we could improve.  So, during a nice break from meetings all the way through the new year we compiled our list for improvement via email, video review, etc to plan our next steps.  That list included:
1. Improve ground speed by swapping the 2.5" omni wheels for 4" omni wheels. We were defended pretty heavily once we proved to be a consistent scorer and feel the approximately 40% improvement in ground speed to go along with our agility could help up be more a proficient scorer in the future,
2. Tighter motor fastening by swapping out all motor screws for screws with thread locker. While we like a busy pit crew, we were tightening motor screws way too much at the Stampede.
3.  Exchange our eight "spliced" threaded beams in our drive modules for single 2.5" beams.  Dealing with the "extra parts" nearly cost us making match time once when we had to make a pre-match adjustment and this easy switch out is a no-brainer.
4.  Improve control over our arm and robot position in autonomous as well as adding selectable options for autonomous sub-routines through use of sensors.  Although we performed well in autonomous at the Stampede, we were entirely dependent upon human positioning of the robot and battery voltage - which led to a few misses we'd rather eliminate.

From that list we ordered some additional parts, took some needed time with family for the holidays, toured the team trophies around to everyone's house, the head coach did some sensor/programming learning, and we added three January meetings and one Feb meeting to our schedule to prepare for our next event on Feb 18.

So, thus far we've had two of our Jan meetings and Kwelaha 1.5 is coming along with improvements. 
1. All motor screws, threaded beams, and wheels are switched out.  This proved to be more tedious than we had planned as a few of the motor screws were really difficult to place (but we got em!) and the new wheels elevated our robot 3/4" and messed up our intake geometry - jamming barrels way too frequently.  So after several iterations and tests at and between meetings (thanks to Jake who will be joining VRC1414 in the spring for the extra help) we settled on moving our chassis cross members that serve as a hard stop for the accumulator one hole toward the rear of the robot to grab the barrels a little lower and just before today's meeting ended (thanks for the idea, Mitch!) we swapped out 2.5" threaded beams for 3" threaded beams that support the top of our polycarbonate sandwich to improve clearance. 
2. Sensors are mounted (4 bumper switches and one quad encoder) along with a new length of shaft we cut to accommodate the encoder.  Test programming for the bumper switches shows promise, the encoder still needs some work.  Stay tuned for next week's update on our autonomous improvements when we'll give detail to our plan.
3. We spent about an hour doing 2:00 at a time driver practice with varied drive teams today to get a good feel for our improved robot mechanically.  We're on our way to learning how to handle our changes and I'm excited by the quick progress after the long layoff in addition to having a faster machine. 

Photos from our Jan meetings (thus far) are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/uprobotics/sets/72157628904216381/
Looking forward to our two remaining meetings and the Feb event!