Saturday before St. Louis

Hello All,

Today we didn’t have a meeting, but we did yesterday, so I thought it nice to update you on our activities as of yesterday.

First of all, we learned who we are traveling with to St. Louis. I think there are a total of about 35 people flying with mentors included, 23 or so are students and the team itself is flying in two groups.

Back in the shop and gym, we worked on mounting the “pokey-stick”. Since most of our tools are in the shop but the robot is in the gym we have a scooter to facilitate movement back and forth across the school… quite the excuse to ride a scooter right? Anyway, back to the pokey stick, it turns out that when installed it clears the tipper! I know it sounds silly but when you are building there is this suspense to whether things will work exactly how designed, and when they do, there is cheering. =)

On another note, the practice bot is looking pretty good now as far as shooting. There is a very intelligent retired systems engineer in Chief Delphi  (Ether) who talked about the method he refers to as a “bang-bang control” to replace the PID that we have been using to stabilize the shooter wheel. With this method instead of oscillating around the goal and correcting it like the PID has been doing, we can turn the motors on only until we are very close or at the desired shooter wheel speed and switch them off otherwise to keep the rpms of the shooter pretty much constant.  We are excited for this new method as it seems to be working swimmingly so far.

On another aspect of robotics, Systems Integration also directed a scouting meeting in which we discussed the importance of collecting data during championship. In case that you are not aware, we scout to figure out possible partners on the field if we make it to the top 8 in our division. It turns out that our ability to scout will be even more valuable this time than it has been previous times this year and more challenging, since the championship has 400 robots and around 100 of those robots are in our division.

Finally, you might remember my comment on the Frontiers photographers coming to AHS. They did come, and our robot along with a few students posed for the camera.

Thank you for sticking around and don’t forget to…

Stay Smelly!

Camila

PS: We practiced triple balancing too, leaving 60 inches of board for other robots to balance on.

Scouting Ahead

Tonight I don’t have much to share with you about progress. If I did so, my pictures would be very similar to last night and my articles would be rather drab. So instead, I am going to focus on a few different design features and showcase several current projects.

This one goes out to you Kyle, if you are reading. Here is this year’s current scouting sheet prepared by Danny. Feedback is always appreciated and I’m sure Kyle will have a word or two

For those of you who don’t know, this sheet is mass produced. We then have scouts from our team in the stands at competition watching every robot in every single match. Those scouts are then responsible for keeping track of robot capabilities and performance, in order for us to rank our opposition. This is highly useful when it comes to the elimination matches, as we may be picking teams to join our alliance!

Tonight the Inner Gripper model was finalized (again). Welcome to the design process… With these designs completed for our end effectors, the crew in the shop cut the aluminum box-tubing which will become the frames for these sub-assemblies. It certainly appears as if we can get started putting them together this weekend!

Here is another key element on the robot which I haven’t focused on much in my articles, the lift. Here is a render of the Double Chain Reduction Lift Drive Assembly. (A mouthful, eh?)

The lift itself is made up of 3 separate stages which extend out like a ladder, allowing us to reach the top peg’s height of 122″ off the ground (over 10 FEET!). In the render above, you might notice a rather large disk with intricate paisley looking cut-outs. That disk is our brake. If you notice on the left side of the brake, that funny shaped part hugging it is a Disc Brake Caliper. These two parts interact, just as your car does. The pneumatically operated caliper squeezes the disc, which is spinning, in order to slow the lift down to a stop. With the capability to lift in 2 seconds and the possible need to stay elevated for periods of time, this will be a nice feature.

So, I lied. I didn’t get you the picture of how this year’s shirt is going to look. It’s probably best I didn’t, because it’s had some major changes done to it. Let’s just say the skunk has all the game pieces around him and it’s certainly colorful. I’ll be happy to unveil the concept to you tomorrow night! (If the P.R. team will let me disclose it.)

One last thing, I’ve heard many people asking about specific dates for upcoming events. I’m not positive about this year’s Unveiling/Ship Party date. However, it sounds like it will probably be on the 21st. Stay tuned, I’ll keep you posted. Here’s what I do know:

Seattle Regionals (we’re on the Cascade Field at Qwest Field Event Center): March 17th-19th

Autodesk Oregon Regional (Portland Memorial Coliseum): March 24th-26th

World Championships (St. Louis): April 27th-30th

When the time comes, I will make sure that I post links to where you can watch the competitions live from home. Week 4 is upon us, GULP!