Total Recall - Day 19

Major Milestone today:  We have a driving robot.  Large wheels, golf ball and lazy susan caster, deck and programming.  Success. 

The programming incudes:  forward and backward, point turn, swing turn, change in speed and change in orientation of the robot's forward direction. 

Timed on the tile floor:  10 feet in 5.5 seconds with 7 pounds and 6 ounces.   

Turns very well  on the tile floor but still needs to be tested on the carpet.  

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Total Recall - Day 18

We continue to struggle with the design of the entire robot.  We understand the major strategy of our robot but have not fleshed out the fine details of the designs.  David M and I visited at length with Scott over lack of communications within the team.   The build team is working but not always in the same direction and often not on the same page.  For example, today some students sought out the dimensions of the chassis for the robot.  They communicated with some of the CAD team and got dimensions for the deck. They cut the deck to 18" x 20" and then routered the edge of the board.  This process took most of 6th and 7th period with the learning process of using the circular saw and the router.  After school, it was communicated that it was the wrong size. It should have been 16" x 18" instead.  This brought up a discussion of what and where are the dimensions of the robot and all assemblies.  On top of this, team members continue to ask me each day "What do I need to work on?".  We need the student leaders to step up, communicate and assign the assemblies of the robot.  

Kendall and Aaron finished the golf ball-lazy susan caster.  It is still in prototype mode but will prove beneficial for testing and evaluation.  The caster will be mounted on the back of the robot chassis.  The omni wheels designs continue to be worked in SolidWorks. Grey and David are very close in finalizing the design.  Tim Ousley continues to do some testing on the CNC mill.  

David W. finished drilling, bending and filing the motor mounts for the large wheels.  The hubs are so much better than we have made in the past.  The vertical mill has proven to be very beneficial in the manufacturing of the hubs.  David got the large wheels and front caster mounted on the deck.  He will work to get it all wired up on Wednesday in the class period.  Hopefully we will have a driving chassis on Wednesday.  

Non engineering teams continue to work in small groups on their individual projects. Michael Watson came in tonight to work with the Website team.  He says that all of the students are all experienced in HTML.  They are making progress in content creation at this time. 

The BEST Award team has continued to work on the notebook, display and documentation.  

Basecamp is beginning to be used more and more by the team.  We will see if it the use continues over the course of the season.  It provides a nucleus for all of our documentation and communications to reside, be shared and begin from. 

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Total Recall - Day 17

We had our weekly team meeting tonight.  Students began coming into the shop after school but the team meeting was not until 6:30.  Work was done in the following areas:  front wheel caster, bucket for gadgets, painting golf balls, website, community team, display and more CAD.  

Several students continue to complete lessons in SolidWorks.  The use of the printed lessons in the "CAD bible" has proven to be very beneficial.  This provides a method for the students to work at their own pace through the lessons and learn the software.  Grey has continued to show great interest in the use of the program.   He has been taking a SolidWorks computer home in the evenings to work on the design of the omniwheels.  Claude has a robot design with drive wheels, bucket and arm completed.  

Sean and Lauren work on the design of the display, more specifically the golden egg apparatus and marble sorter.  Sean has completed a bill of materials for the display. 

At the team meeting, David presented Basecamp to the team. It is our project management software for team.  Basecamp had donated the service to the team to implement.  Jonny had populated his programming team information in the program, so David used this as an example for the team to see.  Michelle and Karen spoke to the team about the importance of daily updates on progress and goals for each subteam.   Leaders are responsible for making sure these updates occur.  

Joe, Michael and Rebecca were able to make the meeting tonight along with Scott and Linda.  We had 43 students in attendance for the meeting and a few others who came in to work after school but could not stay for the meeting.  Next week Scott will be presenting Sensors for FIRST Robotics.  

Drive practice is less than 5 days away but no driving robot at this point.  The team is close to putting the drive base together though.  Drive wheels and hubs are completed, while we continue to work on the chassis, motor mounts and front wheel caster.  Hopefully we will get those completed on Tuesday. 

We received notification from National Instruments that our LabVIEW for Education has been FEDEX'ed to us.  It is a classroom install of 25 seats for the team and class.  We will move to LabVIEW in Robotics I very soon. In addition, I continue to see how we can resolve the SolidWorks software issues.  

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Total Recall - Week two wrapup

We have completed two weeks of the build season at this point.  We have made progress with the team structure and students working under student leadership.  The groups seem to be working but need redirection from time to time.  

Student leadership and decision making has been an aspect we have not had the past few years.  We had a few students who were willing to take on leadership roles as well as lead a small group in some decision making.  The mentors have all agreed we feel it is very important to have more student leadership and decision making on the team.  At times, the team works very within these confines but we still seem to be figuring out how to make it work as well as staying within that system.  Many times, students have approached one of the mentors to ask a question about a team decision only to be told, find the student lead who is responsible for that and visit with them. 

On Saturday, we had students working on the following groups: shop/robot, programming, CAD, website, media, video, BEST award, photography, outreach and the FTC team.  Lots of students working in the shop,  three different groups in the classroom and three groups in the hallway. 

Joyce Witowski visited with several of the group leaders on Saturday about project management and communications. Joyce arranged for us to get Basecamp for the team to manage projects this year.  Basecamp is the leading web-based project management and collaboration tool. David has sent out invitations to team members to set up accounts.  He will do a presentation for the team on Monday night about how Basecamp works and how it will be implemented on the team.   

The team has continued to struggle with what are the final dimensions and decisions on the robot.  On Saturday, time was spent on aspects that were discussed but never finalized.  This created a situation where we had to take time out of the day to discuss and make the decisions so that all the robot team was on the same page. We have two different groups who are working front wheel designs for the robot.  One of the design is a omniwheel, while the other design is a remodel of our golf ball caster mounted on the lazy susan.  Tim Ousley came by on Saturday to see the progress of the team.  He worked with a few kids on using the mill.  He also took some scrap lexan home to experiment with his CNC. We are planning on a few of the students going to his house to help mill the parts for the omni wheels.  Rear wheel size was determined to be 10" for the robot.  Wheel hubs are done, wheels are done with rubber tread, now we need the motor mounts completed so we can get the robot platform running around.  

Jonny and the programming team have prototyped code for all the aspects of the robot. They are awaiting the completion of the chassis for deployment and execution of the code.  

The media team worked on several different aspects on Saturday.  Austin and his group worked on ideas and storyboards for the Youtube Video submission while the website team worked on web structure, content creation and programming options.  

The BEST award team looked over winning notebooks from last year.  They focused on aspects that were present in all the notebooks as well as features that stood out in each notebook.  The discussion also revolved around possible themes for the display.  The display has discussed having a mechanical/robotic portion of the display this year. 

Mark Dutton came to visit with the team on Saturday.  He is attending Texas A&M.  It was good to see him in the shop visiting with the team.  He just came in and went to work with the team just like he had been involved with the team from the first day of school this year.  We visited about his classes and looked at two of his books from his classes. His design workbook has lessons very similar to what we are working with the robotics I students currently.  Mark mentioned it was very apparent to him the students in his classes who have had the opportunity to work on teams or projects prior to enrolling at Texas A&M.

On a side note, after discussions with the CATE Department Head, Pat Betzner, we will have more funding available for the team from the Carl Perkins Grant.  This news allows us to reevaluate the regionals we will attend in the Spring for FIRST.  Team leaders have decided we will attempt to attend two regionals this year:  San Antonio and Dallas.  San Antonio is a first week regional and a Bag and Tag event as well.  This means we will bring our robot to San Antonio with us rather than have it shipped.  We will ship it to Dallas which is a week four event.  

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TCEA LEGO Robotics Training - Third and Final Day

Today we will have our third and final day of training here in Austin.  Notes from the day will be displayed below.  If you are watching live, please tell us hello, where you are from and a little something about you.  I am also interested in how you found the blog.  Please share with the group.  Several people in the class are interested in how to develop a Personal Learning Network (PLN).  Most of the teachers in attendance here will be participating in a robotics contest for the first time, so drop them a line in the blog for any resources you think they could use in regards to LEGO contest, team management, lessons, resources and encouragement.  

 

I received an interesting quote today in my email, so I thought I would share.  

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

- John Quincy Adams

 

Made me think a little and wonder if you ever thought about it. 

• Who do you inspire? 
• How do you get inspire? 

1. Who inspires you? 

 

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Total Recall - Day 11

Students broke up into small groups in the shop to begin work on the robot.  Claude took the CAD team and made assignments to work on.  Six different students were working on CAD models of robot parts and or systems.  David showed several students how to use the mill while working on his wheel hubs for the large robot wheels.  David M. worked on casters/wheels/skids for the front of the robot with a few other students.   Several students worked on laying out the course dimensions on the carpet.  A large group of student use the GST to test how long it takes for Gadgets to travel down.  They were testing in different quantities. The MRT was completed and ready for testing.  Jonny and Robert continued to work on programming in RobotC.  They have made great progress in the programming of the different features of the robot.  Dustin and Brett were in the shop today working on the website and content for it.  

The FTC team continues to work on their design while the BEST team works at the same time.  

Today we received good news from Linda McMahon that our corporation for Westlake & Eanes Science & Technology Association came through today.  We still have work to do on the 501 (c) 3 non profit paperwork though.  It is great to see this happening and most of the thanks goes to Linda for all of her hard work and guidance.  

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Untitled

Day two training

 

The notes for the day will be below in the blog.  If you are watching it live, please comment or share any resources so we know who is watching.  Your comments will be approved 

 

 

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TCEA LEGO Robotics Training

Day 1 of the three day workshop was very informative and interesting.  We each received our LEGO Education kit and laptop.  Each of us had to organize our kits, build our first robot (DomaBot) and begin to play in the LabVIEW environment.  We learned and saved several basic drive programs.  Drive forward, drive backward, point turn, swingturn and loops were the main topics.  

The workshop was very well organized and run by the three presenters:  Betty Justus, Peggy Reimers and Kathy Holberg.  Each of them demonstrated and worked with all of the teachers.  We each were given two task at the end of the day: work on "The Square" contest and our air conditioner interface drawing.  

The software did not seem as daunting as I had believed it would be.  The fact that I have used Mindstorms definitely helped me in utilizing the software.  I am looking forward to Day two. 

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Total Recall - Day 10

Week two began with a smaller group of the team meeting.  It was rather disappointing to see the turnout we had at the meeting, but the meeting was successful none the less. 

We began the process with where are we and what do we need to get done.  Sean and David reported on the progress of the robot design so far starting with an update on the progress from Saturday.  Designs of the robot were written down and discussed for each individual system.  We have chosen to focus on one game specifically.  This simplifies our strategy as well as our robot.  The robot will include two majors systems on the robot.  Demonstrations of these systems were given to the class with cardboard and/or paper prototypes. Questions revolved around specific details which clarified the design and its purpose.  

System one was decided to be multi functional.  This system will model a previous apparatus we have implemented in the past.  This system will be utilized in controlling the MRT, manipulating game pieces as well as Data Port communications. 

System two will be a utilized to control games pieces from the GST.  This system will undergo some refinement from the cardboard prototype.  These refinements will include location on the robot, release mechanism, elevation from the floor and material consideration.  

David presented team structure to the team on the Whiteboard.  Team leads and sub team leads were identified. Team members also identified what teams they wanted to work on.  After this presentation, Sean gave the group some tasks that needed to be completed by each team.  CAD of the robot systems is high on the priority at this time.  Some of the parts of the robot can go forward at this time.  Game field production can also begin on Tuesday.  

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TCEA Robotics Workshop

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Total Recall - Day 7 -- One week down, 5 weeks to go!

One week has gone by since Kickoff for Total Recall.  Progress continued not only on the robot design but in regards to some other areas as well.  We had students working on many different aspects of the contest today but still have many things to be nailed down at this point.  Progress was made in the following areas:  programming, robot piece design, game field pieces made, website, Solidworks and robot construction. 

Programming 

Jonny and Robert worked with Scott.  The team worked on a debounce feature which could implemented with the data port reading and relay of information.  Jonny did a very good job in working with and explaining to Robert what they were attempting to do.  Student mentorship is so important I believe in the success of our program.  Jonny also visited with design teams in regards to how programming would be involved with their designs.  

Robot Design

Students divided up into groups to work on systems of the robot.  We started out with the day with four different groups focusing on one specific aspect of the robot.  Each group worked on cardboard prototypes that were to 1:1 scale.  Several different iterations of each design were worked on and evaluated by each individual group.  Presentations were made at the end of the day by each group.  They demonstrated their prototypes to the team.  Team members offered feedback about the designs for clarification as well as ways to possibly improve the design.  Progress was made in eliminating some designs but final decisions still need to be made on several of the features.  

Game Field

Lauren and Michelle worked on the MRT construction while Sean R worked on the MPC.  Each group will complete their piece construction on Monday.  Tim Jordan worked on the calculations of the Scanning Tube since some of the dimensions do not seem to be correct.  The official Q and A has stated that an updated copy of the dimensions will be available soon.  The pipe and fitting were purchased for the Scanning tube to be manufactured.  

Website

The website team met with Linda and Rebecca today to begin to work on the structure of the site.  They discussed the evaluation rubric for the contest as well as did some work on looking at some other designs.  Assignments were decided upon to begin the initial creation of content for the site.  

SolidWorks and Robot Construction

Several students worked on SolidWorks of robot parts as well as working on tutorials.  Manuel worked with Grey on the SolidWorks File of the large motor. They were were working on the beginning of the motor mount.  David demonstrated making a drawing, printing, cutting and milling a block.  

Good progress was made for the first week of Total Recall.  A few of the systems are in the process of refinement while others still remain to be worked out.  

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Total Recall -- Day 5

The team continued to work on designs of the robot.  Teams worked in small groups.  Each team worked on the entire robot.  Supper was donated by Chipotle for the entire team.  Student leaders left around 5:15 to pick up supper.  They did not return until nearly 6:30 due to problems with the order not being ready.  This left team to work within their small groups without much direct instruction and/or redirection by student leadership.  The design groups seemed to have lost focus on the purpose of the activity.  After the meal, teams presented their designs.  Many of the designs were vague in many aspects while focusing very much on one or two aspects.

Lessons learned included

• Student leadership must be present to help with direction of the team
• The entire team should not be involved in the design of the robot
• Students are struggling with the concept of designing the robot to meet all the criteria in the scoring strategy
• I should work more on student leadership skills and expectations
• The numbers of the program will require restructuring in the future
• Student leadership structure should already be in place with subteams identified
• In addition, students should know what subteam they are working under

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Total Recall - Day 6

This day proved to be a little frustrating but progress was made on the design. Discussions of strategy have moved into designs but most of the designs still prove to be incomplete.  Many of the small groups have focused on one or two features of the robot rather than the whole robot.  Groups began to make prototypes of pieces with cardstock, tape and staples.  Several groups had to be refocused on a number of occasions due to getting off task.  Most of these behaviors were just seemingly random conversations that led away from the task at hand.  Some groups chose to utilize materials in the shop to do some testing to see how the game pieces acted in certain situations while others just made assumptions on how the pieces would interact with the robot.  A few students applied some basic physics to make some calculations to assist in designing and evaluating their design.  

Team structure was discussed between David and several of the mentors.  He has continued to try and place individuals in sub team leadership roles.  The structure is coming together.  He also moved from group to group to ask questions about their designs and to help keep them focused on the process of designing.   

Jonny worked with Scott on the RobotC installation. Sometimes this proves difficulty due to the school computer have DeepFreeze on them.  This software resets the image of the computer each time it is turned off to an original state.  The software must be turned off so we can install software and sometimes it interferes with how the software interacts with the programming interface.  Scott worked with Jonny on the controls and interface as well as the software on the computer.

In the presentations from the small design groups, many teams focused on one of two aspects of the game.  Both of those aspects proved to be third or fourth in priority for our scoring strategy.  Team discussion at the end of the evening revolved around what was done for priority one and two.  If we could not do priority one, we could not score a single point in the contest.  If priority two could not be accomplished, the scoring strategy becomes much less effective by making the jobs of all three workers in the system much more difficult and task oriented.   

The team will not work on Friday, although the robotics II students will meet in class.  Discussion in class will revolve around Saturday's activities and the evaluation of Thursday nights progress and setbacks.  

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Total Recall -- Day 3

Wow, what a day in the shop for Westlake Robotics.  It started in the class with discussion of the new possible strategy.  The assignment for the day was to discuss the three possible strategies we felt were available.  The classes were divided up into three groups.  Each group was to evaluate a specific strategy.  The evaluation included a timeline, expected score with the strategy, how easy it would be to build a robot for this strategy, how easy would it be to drive as a driver, pros and cons of the overall strategy and any other key notes or ideas. 

School was out and the madness began.  It seemed as if the room were going to explode with the number of students that came into the room.  In addition to the students coming to work on the BEST contest, the FTC team came up to work on their contest as well.  

Groups broke up into the three independent strategies to continue the evaluation and discussion of the strategies.  We had groups in the shop, the classroom and in the halls.  Excitement was in the air as the groups begin to form and discuss their strategy.  Each grouped use the game Excel Spreadsheet to assist in score prediction. 

The entire group was brought back together in the classroom.  Students were in chairs, on table tops and the floor while the presentations were given.  Each group gave a presentation which included a timeline on the whiteboard, expected score as well as an explanation of the difficulty of building the robot and learning to drive it.  After each group had presented, the entire group asked questions in regards to the presentations of each strategy.  The group began to discuss and list Pros and Cons of each strategy on the board with each point being discussed.  

The team worked until supper arrived.  Parents delivered the meal for the 50 or so people who were present.

After the meal, the team decided upon the one strategy we would pursue with our robot.  It was fairly easy to come to a decision based on the presentations of the evaluations provided by the teams.  The remaining students broke up into design groups to begin to develop ideas for the robot to perform the strategy.  

At the end of the meeting, a group of the student team leads discussed leadership positions with the team. The team will be divided into three sub teams:  Robot, Media and Community.  Each of these teams will have a leader who will place leadership positions under them for each additional sub-team.  

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Total Recall -- Day 3

The team did not meet officially today due to Open House at Westlake HIgh School, but students chose to meet and discuss the contest.  I had students coming into the classroom starting at the beginning of 8th period and it continued up until Open House began at 6:30.  One group of 10 students stayed in the shop to discuss, debate, brainstorm and theorize about the contest.  If was great for the parents and the high school administration to witness the students choosing to work on their own for the contest and the team.  The group in the shop was composed of students that represented all types of students on the team:  

• First year Robotics I students from this year with no experience on the team or in robotics
• Robotics II students - the contest is an extension of the class and a required participation
• Ex Robotics II who are not enrolled in any robotics class this year but are very active in leadership roles, one of which is the first four year student in our program
• Robotics III students - students who are enrolled in ISM with mentorship from mentors on our robotics team
• Non Robotics class students who have chosen to participate on the team

These students primarily spent time discussing strategy and potential designs to fit each strategy.  The discussion included drawings on the windows with erasable markers to demonstrate ideas to each other.  

No decisions were made in regards to strategy or design of the robot but respect was earned by some of those individuals with student team leads.  It was also very apparent to the parents that the students was engaged in the process and very motivated as individuals.  

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Total Recall - Day 2

 We met this afternoon since we will not be able to meet on Monday night.  Monday night is Open House for Westlake High School.  David and Lauren ran the meeting and discussions. David made a small presentation to the group concerning team structure, student leadership and purpose of the meeting for the day.  

The group discussed any questions they had on the games rules and descriptions.  It was hard to keep the team focused on the task at hand.  Several times, someone would bring up a design feature or description of the robot.  Lots of discussions of rules interpretations and definitions.  Definitions of game pieces and the field have seemed hard to keep clear at this point. The group focused on a strategy and what we would attempt in each round along with a time line.  The formula for the scoring was discussed at length to explain the importance of each portion of it.  It became very clear using the scoring sheet what we felt was best for us to attempt in each round. 

Grant proposed a scoring strategy with a time line.  Discussions arose over how long it would take for each part of the round.  I volunteered to be the robot for demonstration purposes for Grant and the team.  The team designated landmarks in the classroom that represented the course. Grant gave me instructions to perform that represented actions of his scoring strategy.  The time was recorded for each me to complete each action.  After each action, discussion ensued about the time taken and how effective our robot would be in performing the action.  Students from last year team had good input on the time it would take based on observations of last year's robot in the contest.  Shelby recorded the actions and the predicted times for each action.  The team discussed how the score would change according to different scenarios as well as the order of the steps of the robot actions.  The scenario gave the team the ability to evaluate the game and contest in a visual way as well as comparing it to the time in the round.  The actions of the robot strategy were decided upon.  David and Lauren led the team in the Robot Will, Robot Might and Robot Will not activity.

Students were given the task to begin to work on designs that fit the strategy of the robot.  These designs should be done in small groups rather than as an individual.  The designs should also include the motors, servos, methods of performing each task, etc.  

David is going to write up the Robot Strategy the team decided upon and share it in Google Docs with the team.  David closed the meeting with having a small meeting with students who are interested in working in team leadership positions.  

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2010 BEST Robotics Contest Kickoff - Total Recall

The countdown has begun.  Day one Today was the beginning of the BEST Robotics Kickoff for 2010.  Total Recall is name of the game this year. The kickoff was held at Pfluegerville Connally High School.  The kickoff consisted of workshops, game reveal and kit of parts pickup.  Scott McMahon, our lead Mentor, delivered a workshop on RobotC for VEX.  We had the largest number of students in attendance Westlake has ever had. The event last nearly all day since the workshops were 2 hours long.  The game was setup all day for teams to look at.  There was lots of speculation. This year represents the 10th anniversary for Capital BEST.  Capital BEST was responsible for designing the game this year.   

Teams took a break for lunch and returned for Kit of Parts Pickup and Inventory.  Lots of changes this year in store for the BEST Contest.  The control system is the VEX Cortex Microcontroller and VEXnet Joystick.  Teams will be able to program with EacyC or RobotC as well as use MathLAB Simulink.  Teams also received the SolidWorks  for 5 months along with InspirTech SolidWorks curriculum software.  In addition to the VEX control system, the Kit of parts also has some changes.  Our kit has new motors, motor interface connectors and numbers of servos.  

The game was revealed after a short video explaining the contest and a guest speaker.  Teams were introduced to the game concepts in the video and then moved to the filed for the demonstration as well as Q and A.

Our team loaded our materials up and headed back to the shop for discussion.  Each member of the team received a packet of rules for the Game as well as the Generic rules.  We spent time reading over the rules, discussing the rules and definitions.  The game has a large number of terms to keep straight and learn.  David and Sean lead the meeting with the students.  Sean reiterated the fact that reading the rules is so very important.  

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