Autonomous Menu "complete" ... late October meetings

Only a few weeks until we compete for the first time ever.  We've spent almost all of our time lately on minor mechanical tweaks, a little bit of driver practice and really hammering away at our autonomous routines.  There are four of them - one to score in the isolation zone, another to score in the interaction zone, a third to scatter the stack, and a fourth just to sit still.  Special thanks to the KTOR crew for showing us a template we could use for routine selection using jumpers. 

After reading the vex forums (www.vexforum.com) we decided that using the jumper method would be best suited for our rookie endeavor.  While the routines aren't perfect, they all are highly functional, pretty much just using "wait" statements and paying close attention to starting battery voltage.  If time allows we may try to add some simple switches/sensors so we're less dependent upon voltage and wait time, but we feel pretty good about what we have as is. Here are a few photos of the mechanical setup that supports our routine selection:

Autonomy ... and settling into roles ... Oct 12 Meeting

Flurry of activity at our one-hour meeting today:
1. Bryan & Jonas concentrated on autonomous programming today, got one routine done, got a huge chunk of another one in the bag and tested as well.  Running an autonomous routine for the very first time and seeing it succeed was the highlight of the day for everyone for sure! Shout our to the KTOR crew for helping us with programming templates for EasyC.  That little help is going a long way, thanks! Bryan also brought a draft of our scouting form for review to the meeting.
2. Ben & Justin concentrated on a short mechanical tune up, then developed the start of a checklist for between match check ups to help ensure full functionality in all matches.  They then supported our driver practice.
3. Casey & Mitchell mounted, secured and labeled out pwm/jumper autonomous selector hardware and then spent the bulk of the time on interaction zone driver practice.  They are getting there!

We're certainly really coming together as a fully functioning team at the right time.  With a handful of meetings still to go before our Nov event, the anticipation is surely growing.

See you next week,
Kressly

Tuning Up/Getting Ready/Event Planning_ Sept 28 & Oct 6 meetings

One hour weekly meetings are flying by, but are productive. To those who have sent all the positive feedback, thanks!  As promised, but a little late, robot specs:
Drivetrain - 5 motor eight omni wheel drive.  4 motors driving 4 of six forward facing wheels with tank style control and one motor driving two middle sideways wheels controlled by joystick buttons.
Arm - 4 motor surgical tubing lift assist arm with a 60:12 (5:1) single-stage high strength gear reduction.  Y cables allow two channels to power all four motors.  Enough torque, rather quick, and shared load across motors with the surgical tubing help make it easy to operate smoothly.  Hard stops prevent arm from extending CoG to robot tipping point.
Accumulator - 3 object capacity, 2 motor powered tank tread covered with VEX foam intake.  Foam held in place by adhesive backing and woven #32 rubber bands.  Polycarbonate "sandwiches" objects securely and allows for flexible hold on different sized objects.  "Soft stop" keeps objects from falling out the accumulator top.

Accomplishments during these two meetings:
We've gotten in a little driver practice - mostly in the isolation zone, decided as a team to specialize jobs at the Nov event, divided up jobs, started developing a scouting information sheet, talked over tournament structure, and have an autonomous programming template built from a sample that will allow us to program our four desired autonomous programs.  The team is handling things in a very upbeat and professional manner and we're excited to watch things come into place.

Our goal between now and the Nov 19th event is simple - be as prepared as humanly possible in order to maximize the chances of success.

autonomous planning / promo shoot: Sept 19 meeting

Good to have the entire team at Monday's meeting.  We planned and prioritized our autonomous strategies (programming to begin next week), got some driver practice in, and shot a bunch of video and stills so we could put a 2011 promo video together.  Here it is:

Full robot specs are more to come next week!

-Kressly

Meet Kwelaha: Sept 14 Meeting

After a short hiatus to concentrate on the start of the school year, the Robobraves got back to work on 9/14 finishing off the punchlist items, tidying things up, and declaring Kwelaha (which is "Hope" in Lenape) mechanically complete.  After initial testing before the short hiatus, the decision was made to remove a stabilizing/connecting bar (this piece) from the underside of the accumulator.  This will allow for our bottom polycarbonate sheet edge to flex more freely, allowing for both balls and barrels to be collected in multiple orientations with equal proficiency.  Other than that one minor tweak, the design as previously discussed here looks to be very solid and we're thrilled at the results of our initial testing with a "complete" robot. Here's a short set of video clips from our testing:

From here we will be concentrating on autonomous strategy and programming, driver practice, and competition readiness.  The team is pretty excited to see it coming together and so am I.

Until next week,
Kressly

Darn Murphy! ... Aug 26 meeting

Murphy's Law (for those of you who don't know Murphy, look HERE ) stepped in today and prevented us from completing our punchlist (hey 2/3 done ain't bad, though).  However, the close to 30 minutes we spent on extracting and replacing a bent shaft in our arm joint was a good thing as this was most likely the cause of our broken gear tooth on the other side of our arm earlier in the build.  I like knowing root causes of failures, and I'm thrilled we learned this now as opposed to on the field of play.

         
Thus, we have no spectacular video to show just yet.  However, I will say I'm excited at the promise this newborn is showing and we did get far enough along today to show you these pics and can tell you her name is Kwelaha, which is "Hope" in Lenape language.  See HERE for pronunciation. You can also take a look at our flickr page for updated photos.  Enjoy and see you with video and more in the next week or two.   For our friends on the East Coast, stay dry this weekend!
-Kressly


















  

Down to the Punchlist - Aug 23rd Meeting

Sometimes things go as expected, even in competition robot development.  The August 23rd meeting was our smoothest yet.  We were able to transition fully to VEXnet control (woooo for fund raising!), practice driving the "whole" robot (accumulator arm not ready to run full-blown quite yet) using the VEXnet joystick (sweet), accomplish optimization of our surgical tubing assist while also making it easy to disconnect in seconds to work on arm joints as necessary, added one of the two additional motors to our arm lift joint (the other arrived UPS after the meeting), decided there was no need to take mass out of our already very thin polycarbonate sheets (that tubing and added motors ROCK!), and we were able to create a driver-control programming schematic, get it all successfully programmed in EasyCv4 for Cortex, and after two sets of bench tests and one set of tweaks - reversing a few motor channels - everything operates as it is intended in driver control mode!

We'll be updating our Flickr account and our Youtube Channel in the next few days to provide more visuals for you all, but for now here's our punchlist for mechanical "completion" of 1414's first ever robot.  A list we hope to complete Friday:
1. add hard stops to arm lifts
2. add soft/spring stop to accumulator
3. mount number plates
4. mount graphics
5. mount flag holders
6. mount final motor
7. finish motor and wire labeling
8. remove temp electronics mount and replace with final mount
9. Find loose connection for one of our drive motors and retape it
10. Make sure no drive shafts are protruding from chassis
11. Add angled tower supports
12. Mount graphics
13. Ensure current tubing assist allows for match starting position of arm
14. File sharp edges

With similar good fortune next time we should see the robot score her first game object on our practice field Friday!

Until then,
Kressly