Reflexions

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Saturday, January 17th was probably the most productive day of our team in it's two and a half year existence. We had 9 adults/mentors working with 22 different students throughout the day. We had projects going in the following areas: newsletter/website, programming, chassis, programming, prototyping of kicking mechanisms, Breakaway course pieces and Solidworks CAD design. It was great to see all the work being done on such a variety of projects.

By the end of the day, we had a number of bumps completed, chassis completed ready to be driven, newsletter design and the initial building of kicker prototypes.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Dr. Howie Diblasi -Staff Development at Westlake High School

21st Century Skills that are important:

Critical Thinking
Problem Solving
Collaborate - globally
Teamwork
Teach kids to search and sort

Books -

Brainstorming

The Imagineering Workout - Disney

Twitter/Tweetdeck

Ning - Web2.0 collaborative technologies - up to 29,000 members currently. Steve Hardagon does three activities each week:

skype
webinar
communication piece

Blog - (http://mytooltest.blogspot.com/)

improve collaboration skills
improve reading/writing comprehension
authentic audience

Edheads www.edheads.org Design a cell phone activity. We rocked the sales.

Good day with Dr. Howie.

Posted via web from To Think About

Friday, January 15, 2010

Decisions lead to progress and protypying

Prototyping

The team worked on various projects tonight including: VEX robots for the education team, programming with a motor and the camera, prototyping decisions of ball kicker/puncher, testing of slow recovery foam effects on the soccer ball, and arena layout cut sheets. We had several different groups working on the previously mentioned activities. It was nice to see the new faces of the robotics team working with returning veterans. The new faces not only included students but new mentors as well.

Programming

Vision targeting was successful in following a red target with the camera as well as getting a motor to spin and change speeds. The mentors worked with the students on the LabVIEW environment.

Education/VEX robots

A small group of students worked on squarebots from the VEX kits. They completed 4 robots in the evening. Many of the students working on the VEX bots are new to the team but worked with a few veterans such as Jonathan Dahm.

Prototype design ideas

Students broke off into two groups to continue to discuss and research possible ball kicking/punching devices. One group decided to use the ball roller mechanism on the 2009 FRC robot to evaluate the effect of rollers on the soccer ball. The roller imparted a backspin on the ball. Each group also worked on scale drawings of their designs. These started out as napkin type drawings but lead to scale drawings sketched with pencil and CAD drawings.

In addition to the kickers, some experimenting was done with the slow recovery foam that will be placed in the goals. The foam stops the rotation of the ball upon impact but it does not have the spandex cover that will be placed over it in the goal.

Chassis SolidWORKS

Stephen Bracken began the SolidWORKS of the chassis and drive system. He utilized the .stp files provided by FIRST and ANDYMARK.

Course Build and Cut List

Three students worked on salvaging wood from last years robot crate. They utilized Tim Jordan's cut list and layout sheets he worked up from the course drawings. We will begin building the course pieces on FIrday.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions - Brainstorming Night #3

The team met to continue brainstorming and working on Breakaway, FIRST Robotics Contest. Team members met in the robotics classroom/shop to continue working to solve the contest. The programming team continues to work with LabVIEW. The test bench was setup with an ANDYMARK ToughBox transmission with a CIM attached. We had difficulty with the Classmate the previous night. Mentor Michael Watson took the netbook home and got it working.

Ball manipulation

The team broke up into two different groups to brainstorm methods to manipulate the soccer ball. After each team had come to some conclusions, the entire group assembled again. Each team presented their ideas including drawings and explanations of the apparatus. We worked hard to keep from criticism or evaluating each design. Sketches were made on the Whiteboard. The sketches were recorded with pictures as well as napkin sketches. Linda McMahon made audio recordings of the presentations along with notes she took with her special pen. Pictures were taken with an Iphone.

At the end of the night, all of the design features were discussed and many of them eliminated since they violated the game design rules.

Robot design and orientation

The team also discussed features to control the ball as it comes from other robots, off the tower, controlling the ball below the bumpers, ways to prevent handling or manipulating multiple balls at the same time. A variety of materials were discussed to help with the assistance of controlling the balls. We also made the decision to be a wide robot instead of a narrow.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Team 2468 Openhouse and Brainstorming night 2

Team 2468 Robotics Openhouse

Team 2468, Team Appreciate hosted our first Robotics Openhouse on January 12 at Westlake High School. It was exciting to see current students and parents mixing and mingling with mentors, potential sponsors and visitors. The team had robots from the 2008 and 2009 FIRST Robotics contest and one robot from the 2009 BEST Robotics contest. Students demonstrated and explained the robots to the visitors.

Jackson Greulich and Scott Stoller from the 2008 Rookie All Star Team were present along with members from the Cedar Creek Team X FIRST Lego League team. Mentors present were Scott and Linda McMahon, Joe Hershberger, Tim Ousley, Tim and Dona Jordan, Michael Watson, Joyce and Bob Witowski, Sheldon Miller and Norman Morgan. Dr. Nola Wellman, Superintendent of Eanes ISD schools not only was there but also made a few comments to the guests and students.

Breakaway, the 2010 FIRST robotics contest, animation was played and explained for the crowd.

Brainstorming Night 2

After Openhouse, members of the team retreated to the robotics classroom to continue discussions of the Breakaway. Notes were reviewed from the Monday night. Discussion revolved around the six principles of offensive/defensive will, might, will not strategies as they applied to the three phases of the contest: autonomous, tele-operated and finale.

New ideas were discussed and recorded. A large portion of the discussion revolved about the types of robot for each zone of the field. Three types of robots were described: goalie or backfield bot, midfield bot and scoring/zone bot.

Goalie bot needs to be large or able to block shots of opponents, pin robots or disrupt shots by the opponent and be able to move back and forth across the field. In addition the goalie needs to be able to pass balls forward or score from this zone.

Midfield bot needs to able to maneuver easily, score from this zone, receive passes from the goalie bot and control balls as they come off the tower.

Scoring/zone bot needs to be able to score balls as they rebound or are delivered to the zone. Needs to be a bot that is maneuverable/controllable and quick.

Drivetrains were discussed and looked at it. We looked at omni wheels, mecanum wheels, swerve drive, tank drive and ackermann. Ackermann was eliminated from the discussion. Swerve drive would prove to be difficult because of ground clearance. Tank drive presents a problem of difficulty of turning on the carpet with tackie wheels from observations of the kickoff.

Maneuverability was decided as primarily important in the drivetrain.

Discussions also revolved around the top of the robot and the ability to receive a pass or absorb the impact of a ball coming towards the robot.

Good progress for the day.

Norman Morgan

Robotics I and II

Chem Con

512.732.9280 ext. 33459

Team 2468 - Who do you Appreciate?

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Brainstorming night number 1

The team met with rules packets in hand to discuss Breakaway.

We opened up the discussion with looking at the contest from an offensive as well defensive point of view. Strategy and design go hand in hand but strategy was discussed very heavily this evening. In addition, tournament scoring/seeding was also discussed in the process.

Scott McMahon, Texas Instruments lead the evening of activities. We had 15 students present along with 8 mentors.

The pictures in the gallery summarize the evening's discussions. In the process, we discussed three phases of the contest: autonomous, teleoperated and finale. Offensive and defensive strategies were again discussed in each of the phases. No design or strategy decisions were made in regards to the robot or the contest but I think some design and strategy decisions are starting to form in the eyes of the team. Some designs such as Ackermann steering were eliminated from the discussion.

Tuesday will be an Open House for the community. We will demonstrate robots and answer questions to visitors about our team, the contest and how they can be involved. Brainstorming will also occur in the Scientific Research and Design (Robotics II) class as well.

On a side note, Stephen and David began work on a test bench for the programmers. This will allow the programmers to begin to work on code in regards to motor control and gain familiarity in the LabVIEW environment.

Norman Morgan

Robotics I and II

Chem Con

512.732.9280 ext. 33459

Team 2468 - Who do you Appreciate?

Brainstorming for Breakaway

Team 2468 chose to spend Saturday of Kickoff inventorying and identifying parts as well as reading the rules page by page as team. Breakaway is the title for this years game. Alliances have to score soccer balls in their own goal while attempting to prevent the opposing Alliance from scoring in their goal.
On Saturday afternoon, we read thru the rules as a group. The rules were discussed to clarify what each one meant and how it applied to our team. The discussion often times would go off on an tangent into strategy and design of the robot. As in the past, this was expected while at the same time, we tried to stay true to our purpose of the day: read and understand the rules.

At the end of the day, we discussed how we would look at the strategy and design of the robot in six parameters. The parameters were:

Offensively we will ...
Offensively we might ...
Offensively we will not ...
Defensively we will ...
Defensively we might ...
Defensively we will not ...

Team members were dismissed with their rules packets in hand late in the afternoon. Small discussions of different designs and aspects of the game broke out in the classroom and shop.

Brainstorming as a group will occur on Monday night.

Norman Morgan

Robotics I and II

Chem Con

512.732.9280 ext. 33459

Team 2468 - Who do you Appreciate?

2010 Breakaway GOALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Team 2468 is beginning our third season as a FIRST Robotics Team. The game was revealed on Saturday, January 9th. Over 1600 teams from 11 different countries will be building the robot they believe best solves this problem. Each team will have six weeks to build this robot and prepare it for shipment. Teams will compete in over 40 different regional contests.

Westlake High School's Team 2468 is looking forward to the new contest and season. Please feel free to come by the shop to check out the team working on the contest. We will be meeting Monday thru Thursday evenings in the classroom/shop as well as Saturday's of each week. Below is a description of the game and the course.

Breakaway is a game played on the FIELD (illustrated in the figure below). Two ALLIANCES, one red and one blue, composed of three FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) teams each, compete in each MATCH. The object of the game is to attain a higher score than your opponent by shooting BALLS into a GOAL, climbing on the ALLIANCE TOWER or PLATFORM, or by lifting an ALLIANCE ROBOT off the PLAYING SURFACE. Each Alliance consists of three robots each.

A MATCH is 2 minutes and 15 seconds long. An AUTONOMOUS PERIOD starts each MATCH during which the ROBOTS are controlled by pre-programmed instructions. The AUTONOMOUS PERIOD is followed by the TELEOPERATED PERIOD during which the DRIVERS assume control of the robot. The ROBOTS continue to play the game until the TELEOPERATED PERIOD is over.

Each team will start with one robot in each zone of the course. 12 soccer balls are on the course to be placed by each Alliance with three in the far zone, two in the middle zone and one in the closest zone to their goal.

Norman Morgan

Robotics I and II

Chem Con

512.732.9280 ext. 33459

Team 2468 - Who do you Appreciate?