Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Eythor Bender demos human exoskeletons
via ted.com
Excellent example of engineering applied to a problem and demonstrated.
How Differential Gear works (BEST Tutorial)
via youtube.com
Great tutorial on how a differential works. This video is from 1930 and is so great in explaining how it works.
Take aways for me:
Video worked even in 1930 - it can work now
Black and white video seems to give you a different perspective
Simple examples provide a very clear explanation
Build on the idea to complete the final example
Show a practical example of the principle
Friday, March 25, 2011
Get the Scoop on Classroom-robotics | Scoop.it
“Classroom teacher utilizing robotics and robotics contest to interest students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math”Created and curated by Norman Morgan
Digg search for Science Technology Engineering and Mathem... - Today, 11:23 PM
LJ Create's educational software and equipment solutions for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education.
via scoop.it
My daily Scoop on Classroom Robotics and STEM. Give it a look.
Student Understanding
To understand is to discover... A student who achieves a certain knowledge through free investigation and spontaneous effort will later be able to retain it... Jean Piaget, 1973
Rutgers engineers turn to racetrack to gain skill, get jobs | MyCentralJersey.com | MyCentralJersey.com
Members of the Rutgers Formula Racing Team, (from left) Umur Selek, Omar Ashraf and Derek Horton, work on the team's competition car on the Busch campus. / Jason Towlen/STAFF
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-->-->NEW BRUNSWICK — In 2009, the Rutgers Formula Racing Team was broke and running out of time.
The recession had kept many of its sponsors from supporting the team, which each year builds an open wheel, open cockpit racing car to compete with cars built by other engineering students around the world.
Some of those teams enjoy rich sponsorships from major players in the automotive industry that yield upwards of $100,000 a year in funding in the United States. A German team once netted $250,000.
The Rutgers team receives about $8,000 in fees from engineering students, $4,000 from the engineering school to compete in two events and some cash and free services donated by private companies, such as Sunoco and Sport Honda Powerhouse of Metuchen. The total budget including the donated services is between $20,000 and $25,000.
But the donations fell so low two years ago that the students had to dig deep. Team members came up with $10,000 from their own pockets, team members and the team's staff adviser said.
It paid off. Rutgers came in third in design that year out of about 120 teams from around the world, a huge podium finish given the relatively low amount of financing the team sees.
Abhir Adhate, a senior this year and the team's technical lead, used a credit card to come up with $1,000 in 2009, he said.
But for Adhate, the money was an investment.
He received an internship with Pratt & Whitney that year, based largely on his work on the car. The Connecticut company designs, manufactures and services aircraft engines, space propulsion systems and industrial gas turbines.
Students in colleges and universities have been participating in activities such as these for decades. For 20 years now, FIRST robotics has been providing an equivalent challenge and opportunity to high school students. Programs such as these need to be integrated into more high school and middle school programs.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Mentors, Students - Professional coaches for students for FREE!!!!!!
Waving the Flag for Engineers Everywhere
March/22/2011 at 12:03 pm
As an engineer for GM, Dave Verbrugge has been involved in getting some exciting technology on the road like the active air shutter that is now used on the Chevrolet Cruze ECO model to enable it to get 42 mpg highway. In addition to a management degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he also has engineering degrees from Calvin College, the University of Michigan and Purdue University. But just because he’s an accomplished engineer doesn’t mean he walks around with a pocket protector and a too-short tie. When you see him at the Michigan FIRST Robotics Competition events, he’s usually in the middle of the field, stalking and talking, pointing his finger, jogging from one end to the other and waving team flags. All the time he’s firing up the spectators who have crowded into the gyms to see high school students pit their robots against one another.
Dave with two members of his FIRST Robotics team in 1997
Dave got involved with FIRST Robotics Competition back in 1997. He mentored the students on Team #67 which includes the Huron Valley (Michigan) school district. FIRST was launched in 1992 by inventor Dean Kamen who wanted to get more students interested in careers in science and technology. Dave was among the first GM engineers to step up and volunteer his time to help the students. Now 15 years into his commitment he’s still doing it and you can hear the pride in his voice as he says, “We’ve had a number of students go on to engineering careers up to Michigan Tech, Kettering (University,) University of Michigan and a number of them now are GM engineers.”
via facesofgm.com
Students are fortunate to have mentors such as Dave Verbrugge to volunteer time for teams such as HOT.
As a high school basketball coach, I never had one professional basketball coach spend a day at practice with my students, give them their personal email address or phone number. I currently have professional coaches for my robotics team -- they are called mentors, yes that is right mentors. They mentor the students at Westlake High School in our robotics contests such as BEST, FIRST Technical Challenge, FIRST Robotics Challenge, FIRST LEGO League and Texas Computers Educators Robotics Challenges.
These individuals spend time with the students as they prepare for the contest. They come into the shop after they have worked a full day at their full time job to help the students with projects related to the contest robots such as designing, prototyping and building of robots. In addition some of the mentors work with the students in areas such as programming, website design, marketing, photography, fund raising, outreach and time/project management. The students learn from professionals how to approach and solve problems. The answers to problems and questions are not read from a book but many times come from careful evaluation and planning to come up with a solution.
Thank you to my mentors and the investment they make each and every day. The impact is so profound and far reaching. Individuals such as Dave mentioned above are changing our students on a daily basis. In the troubled times of education systems these days, we need more shining stars such as Dave. The mentors for my team are Scott McMahon, Linda McMahon, Joe Hershberger, Michael Watson, Tim Ousley, Miguel DeLeon, Bob Witowski, Joyce Witowski, Rebecca Phillips, Laura Dutton, John Pflueger, George Celniker, Tim Jordan and Dona Jordan.
If you have mentors such as these, be thankful and give them a special handshake, hug or little appreciation the next time you see them. If you are interested in how to become involved, please email me at coach.norm@gmail.com.
Casting Gears from Epoxy/BEST robot update/Film Shoot
We starting experimenting with making gears from 5 Minutes Epoxy since that is a KOP material for BEST Robotics. We made a mold of the gear with a Freeman mold kit. We sprayed the mold with PAM before we placed the Epoxy in the gear mold. The Epoxy was mixed very well trying to keep the air bubbles at a minimum in the mix. We poured the Epoxy into the mold and let it cure overnight. The gear popped right out of the mold with no problems.
We had to do some work to clean the cast gear up but it seems to be a good, useable gear. We will make another one to use on the pincher for the frisbee (gizmo seal). See the slideshow below for the mold, gear and new gear from this process.
Discussion continue on the design of the gizmo gatherer, the final design of the pincher for the frisbee and the arm standoffs for the arm. The data port reader is ready to be installed on the robot with the wiring on Thursday.
We will have a film crew at the school on Thursday interviewing Keren Rempe, Garrett Witowski, Jonny Dahm and myself as well as doing some filming of LEGO/National Instruments Products in the classroom.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Sidenotes and Robotics Happenings for FRC 2468 - Team Appreciate
Here are a few updates for FRC 2468 Team Appreciate (oh by the way, it all started here)
- We will have a film crew at Westlake High School on Thursday for National Instruments and LEGO products in the classroom video
- The team was featured in some video footage at San Antonio Regional - http://austin.ynn.com/content/276979/camm--learning-by-robotic-competition
- Saturday, March 26th - Barton Creek Mall - Robotics Demonstration with DaVinci Mobile heart surgery robot
- We are donating a two hour LEGO birthday party to Forrest Trail for a silent auction
- We are organizing a potential robotics conference at BEST World Championships
- We received notification from National Instruments of a $2000 grant we will be receiving
- Our BEST robotics team has been invited to participate at the Texas Capital Building in May as part of a robotics demonstration for State Legislatures
- Garrett Witowski is nearing completion of his Eagle Scout project - a 1/2 day Robotics workshop for elementary/middle school age students
- Our storage building was completed by the Maintenance Department from Eanes ISD.
Post Spring Break and BEST Robotics Update - 25 days until drive practice in Florida!
FIRST Robotics season is over for us. We had a great time at The Alamo Regional Inaugural Regional in San Antonio. We placed 20th out of 60 teams and won the Engineering Excellence Award. We were chosen for the number 8 alliance selection by Rookie Team 3847. FRC Team 647 completed the alliance. We played against Bomb Squad (FRC 16), Robowranglers (FRC 148) and Rookie team 3841 - Brandie Bronc Bots. We lost in two straight matches but we went down fighting to the end of the two matches.
Our robot was named in honor of Liz Brocklehurst who succumbed to her battle with cancer one week before the San Antonio Regional.
We won the Engineering Excellence award for our Game piece manipulator. It was a lifter made from 80/20 aluminum extrusion. It can lift the arm 10 feet in the air. The shoulder joint is mounted on the lifter and is able to move approximately 160 degrees of motion depending on the location of the lifter. It runs off a CIM motor with #25 chain and sprocket. The tube for the wrist mount is made of aluminum that was machined with Tim Ousley's CNC utilizing CAD done by the students on the team. The wrist works on a differential system of bevel gears, belts and pulleys. The wrist was capable of moving up and down as well as rotating left and right. The pincher is a controlled with pneumatics. The plate of the pincher or whale tail as it was called in the contest, is made of carbon fiber custom designed and made by the team. The drive team of Robert Kuykendall and Grant Agatston did a great job along with human player David Weiser of competing in the contest with very little drive practice prior to the event.
The team also worked hard to assist other teams in getting ready to compete in the Regional. Students helped with programming, wiring, pneumatics and general work on robots through out the three days of the tournament.
A film crew was there to shoot footage of our team in action for National Instruments and LEGO. They will be in our class this coming Thursday to shoot follow up footage with the team as well.
We participate in SXSW with our robot and three of our mentors on a panel discussion about FIRST robotics and mentoring. Our FTC robot as well as "LIZ" were demonstrated at the event as well.
BEST Robotics
We are now preparing for BEST robotics World Championships in Orlando Florida. The contest will be April 14 - 17 at ESPN Sports Center Village.
The scoring for the contest change with the ECO that was released on March 4th. Gadgets are still worth the same values but gizmos increased in value for delivery and sealing as well as gizmos packages increased in value. Gizmos and packages doubled in point value. We have chosen as a team to go for the dual production points in the contest.
We have brainstormed over the past two days of to methods for doing so. We have decided on a three pronged approach to handling each of the gizmo production pieces. We will have a wire gimbal for handling the cones, a "tennis ball" pick up device for the gizmos and a pincher for the seal on the packages. All of these will be on the end of an arm that pivots above the gadget container on the robot. The data port reader has been redesigned as well with wire for the data connection points rather than the plumbers tape. The reed switches will play a very instrumental part in this strategy. The programmers have been doing some experimenting with the strength of field of the magnets on the sensors. We hope to have an autonomous routine to assist with the successful detection and gathering of the proper gizmos.
Yesterday, we laid up a silicone mold of a VEX gear. Today, we popped the gear out of the mold. We cleaned up the mold and got it ready for the epoxy. We used the 5 minute epoxy in the Kit of Parts to fill the mold of the gear. We will take it out of the mold on Wednesday.
We have a goal of 100 gadgets packaged, return a waste of two gadgets, score at least one gizmo sealed gizmo package with 3 gizmos. This results in a score of 2800 points. We feel we can do this consistently and possibly get a higher score in a few rounds. Consistency along with no waste will be the name of the game. An additional 20 gadgets delivered will result in 240 additional points, and If we can package these, it will result in 360 points for a grand total of 3160.
So design is:
Two motors for drive system
One motor for opening/closing of the gadget door with microswitches at the top and bottom to control the motors
One servo for MRT hooks - this servo will also server as a signaling device for defective gadget color as well as possible identification of magnetic properties
One servo for Data Port Reader
One servo for gizmo manipulator (tennis ball pickup device)
One servo for gizmo package seal - this device will be a two bar linkage with the custom made gears from the epoxy.
The countdown has begun for the final push. 25 days until drive practice in Florida. We hope to be driving a completed robot in less than a week.
Monday, March 21, 2011
After Spring Break Update
The team has returned from Spring Break and now gearing up for BEST Championships. We had a great time at the Alamo Regional Contest in FIRST. We placed 20th out of 60 teams and won the Engineering Excellence award. We were delighted to be chosen as part of the 8th alliance. We were defeated by the eventual champions of 16, 148 and 3481.
Norman Morgan
Robotics I and II
Room 149 - NGC
512.732.9280 ext. 33459
Team 2468 - Who do you Appreciate?
Friday, March 18, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Lego contests put minority students on a mission
By Kevin SieffSunday, March 13, 2011; 11:55 PM
From a classroom in Anacostia, Brittany Robinson, 14, is programming a robot to perform open heart surgery. She's focused, squinting at the small machine, weighing in periodically on the intricacies of computer science and engineering.
Never mind that the robot and the heart are made of Legos.
Her team at KIPP DC: AIM Academy, a charter school, is part of a burgeoning program that uses the children's toys to make engineering more exciting and accessible to students in elementary, middle and high school - an effort that has experienced success in its first years.
At Washington area Lego robotics competitions, Brittany's team is one of a small but growing number of predominantly African American groups. Although most of the Virginia/DC First Lego League's 3,500 entrants and 437 teams are from the suburbs, the Symbiotic Titans are one of a few teams from east of the Anacostia River. Maryland also has a First Lego League.
For many on the D.C. team, robotics has been a revelation.
"I knew the basics of what engineers do, but I didn't know all the things that go with robotics," Brittany said. "I didn't know what it takes to complete a mission."
FIRST LEGO League continues to motivate as well as reward students who are involved. This article is a great example of the influence the contest has on students.
In the article, Brittany Robinson, age 14, states she knew the basics of engineers jobs but did not know all the things associated with Robotics.
I just think it is go great to hear students articulate what the contest has exposed to them to.
FRC 233: THE PINK TEAM Builds SWAT Robot | Kenneth Wong's Virtual Desktop
FRC 233: THE PINK TEAM Builds SWAT Robot
PDBot, a SWAT robot designed and built by FIRST Robotic Competition students from The Pink Team for their local police department.
PDBot as it was built (left); PDBot as conceptualized in PTC's Pro/ENGINEER (now rebranded as Creo Elements/Pro).
When Detective Christopher Cochie from Rockledge Police Department, Florida, first approached FIRST Robotic Competition (FRC) Team 233 to help build a robot for his SWAT team, he had something fairly simple in mind, like a remote-controlled miniature car with a camera mounded on the hood. The team took his ideas, added some of their own, and came back to him instead with a state-of-the-art robot that could climb up steps, trudge through mud, toss a phone, launch flash bangs, and do much more.
Its creators, a group of students from FRC Team 233, were well-versed in the mechanics of robotics, thanks to the competitions they’d participated in. Given the chance to help their local police officers, they jumped at the opportunity, enlisting the help of their teacher and FIRST mentor Marian Passmore and their FIRST sponsor NASA. (Team members were mostly from the Cocoa Beach area, roughly 15 miles away from Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center.)
via deskeng.com
Another FRC team working their magic in their neighborhood. FRC Team 233, The Pink Team (http://www.thepinkteam.org/) built a SWAT robot for the Police Department in Rockledge, Florida.
Read the entire article at the link above.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
DraftSight, FRC Team 2468, Chap Robotics, Mentor Tim Ousley
"We load the drawing up in DraftSight, clean it up and then export it to a 2.5-D CAM package and generate the code to build the parts."
In the fall BEST competition, the team needed a custom wheel called an "omniwheel" to enable better robot stability without constricting freedom of motion. In a fast-moving competition, the only thing worse than a clumsy drive system is an unstable robot. A complex omniwheel could fix both problems, but most teams won’t attempt to make one because of its complexity. Undeterred, one of Ousley’s students designed a single omniwheel made from 18 custom parts. He was able to draw it in DraftSight, then cut it from Lexan using the CNC on a weekend afternoon.
"It is a little tricky to build this kind of stuff, but DraftSight makes it easier," said Ousley. "DraftSight is the perfect tool for quick 2D part design. It’s easy to learn, easy to teach, and has an easy path to CAM. Plus it’s free, which means no barriers for use by our school."
It worked. After winning a local competition, Ousley’s Westlake High School robotics team competed at the Texas BEST Robotics Competition at the University of North Texas’s Coliseum in Denton, Texas. Against 47 other teams from Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, they finished eighth. They also won second place in the Founders Award for Creative Design, which goes to the team that makes the best use of the engineering process in consideration of offensive and defensive capabilities in machine design.
At this spring’s FIRST Robotics Competition, you can bet they’ll be refining the CAD/CAM capabilities they adopted in the fall. Those robots are north of 100 pounds, use vision-enabled real-time embedded computers and are built from aluminum, carbon fiber, steel and sweat.
"Our newfound ability to design, fabricate and modify complex components during the short build season is an intense learning experience disguised as a competitive advantage," said Ousley.
The Westlake High Chap Robotics team is sponsored by National Instruments, Texas Instruments, Pixels & Verbs and others. Mentors like Ousley volunteer time to work with teams after school. While the mentors provide guidance and make sure everybody is safe, the students do most of the work.
Both the BEST and FRC contents involve more than designing, building and operating a robot. They also include building and running a website, marketing, public outreach to younger students, communications, fundraising and teamwork - "intense teamwork," added Ousley.
YouTube video of an omniwheel robot
Wikipedia on omniwheels video showing a BEST competition
Source:
Tim Ousleytim.ousley(at)ni.com Tim Ousley | Senior Engineer | Wireless DAQ R&D | National Instruments 512-683-6671
via 3ds.com
Dessault Systemes featured an article about the mentorship of Tim Ousley, National Instruments with our team utilizing DraftSight to design our Omni Wheels for our BEST robotics competition robot for Total Recall.
We will be competing at the BEST Championships in Orlando Florida on April 14-17, 2011.
Students are so lucky to be able to have mentors such as Tim working with them. Tim with the aid of one of Team 2468's students completed a CNC over the summer and early Fall. Tim worked with the students to utilize DraftSight to design the parts for the Omni Wheels. The students used Tim's CNC to manufacture the parts for the wheels. We need more schools to take part in such programs as well as mentors such as Tim and companies like Desssault Systemes. Contests such as FIRST and BEST allow students to work on real world problems; propose and test solutions; identify setbacks, successes and failures; and learn from professionals utilizing industry standards and practices.
Thank you to Tim, National Instruments and Dessault Systemes for allowing my team to participate.
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Artistic Representation of my life.
Artistic Representation of my life.
From: coachnorm, 14 minutes ago
My artistic representation for Educational Environments Grad School class at Texas State University
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From: coachnorm, 14 minutes ago
My artistic representation for Educational Environments Grad School class at Texas State University
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