We have a YouTube site with videos of our progress, check it out -
Team website is coming soon!
I intend to get back to the ABC's in the future.
Showing posts with label Build Season. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Build Season. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
The Comets are coming
Been side-tracked lately with helping FRC Team 3357 - The Comets, get off the ground.
Monday, February 16, 2009
We Bagged It
Tonight was our last full 3 hour session to work on our robot during build season. The rules state that all Michigan teams, competing in the FIRST in Michigan district events, must bag up their robot by 5pm EST, Tuesday February 17, 2009. None of us felt that it made any sense to wait and try to bag it tomorrow, so we did it tonight.
In our Kit of Parts, we got this huge plastic bag and a special kind of "zip tie" so that we can lock up the robot when our time is up. We have an independent person sign and verify that we've locked up the robot and we keep a log from now on, that shows every time we unlock and re-lock the robot.
This may seem rather goofy, but FIRST is rooted in honesty and "Gracious Professionalism" and this method is much more economical than shipping the robot in a huge wooden crate. We're playing by the rules and trust that all other Michigan teams are too.
Tonight we mounted the gyro on the robot and wrote some code to turn a specific number of degrees. We didn't get it all working, but I think we can before our first event.
In a true FIRST regional event, teams have a full day on Thursday to test and tweak their machines. A new change with FIRST in Michigan, to save teams money, is that the Thursday tweak day no longer exists. This saves teams money, especially when they have to travel and pay for hotel rooms for the team on Thursday night. So, to keep things even, FIRST in Michigan is allowing us to "un-bag" our robots for up to a total of 8 hours during the week of any district event in which we are competing.
We are competing in the first week of competitions, so we have a total of 8 hours we can test and tweak next week. I think we have plenty of time to sort out the last few quirks.
In our Kit of Parts, we got this huge plastic bag and a special kind of "zip tie" so that we can lock up the robot when our time is up. We have an independent person sign and verify that we've locked up the robot and we keep a log from now on, that shows every time we unlock and re-lock the robot.
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| From 2009 Build Season |
This may seem rather goofy, but FIRST is rooted in honesty and "Gracious Professionalism" and this method is much more economical than shipping the robot in a huge wooden crate. We're playing by the rules and trust that all other Michigan teams are too.
 |
| From 2009 Build Season |
Tonight we mounted the gyro on the robot and wrote some code to turn a specific number of degrees. We didn't get it all working, but I think we can before our first event.
In a true FIRST regional event, teams have a full day on Thursday to test and tweak their machines. A new change with FIRST in Michigan, to save teams money, is that the Thursday tweak day no longer exists. This saves teams money, especially when they have to travel and pay for hotel rooms for the team on Thursday night. So, to keep things even, FIRST in Michigan is allowing us to "un-bag" our robots for up to a total of 8 hours during the week of any district event in which we are competing.
We are competing in the first week of competitions, so we have a total of 8 hours we can test and tweak next week. I think we have plenty of time to sort out the last few quirks.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
More Pictures
Today was awesome! Our team was invited by Team 74- Holland C.H.A.O.S to do some testing today on their (almost) full size field. They invited a lot of local teams and there were at least a dozen teams with robots there today. I took a few pictures, and have a few updates.
Here is our robot with Team 2771 - Code Red Robotics right behind us. I'm not sure what we've run into in this picture, in fact I don't recall seeing this on the field at all...
Here is another picture of our robot with Code Red, before many of the other teams showed up.
Here is another shot of our robot.
Our drive team was looking to score on this robot, sorry I don't have a team or number associated with this one. If anyone knows this robot/team, please post a comment. Their robot had a really cool shooter on top.
This was an action shot right before we attempted a score.
We were successful in getting our color tracking autonomous mode working. We were even able to get the sonar working so we have a real good idea of when we are in scoring range. It turned out that when we moved the sonar to a different analog input on the digital side-car, it began giving us correct data. After I left today's practice, our robot did successfully dump at the right time in our color tracking autonomous mode.
Monday we will be fixing a couple switches on the robot that we've wired up incorrectly. These switches allow us to select our autonomous mode for the match. We may attempt a last minute effort to configure our gyro so that other autonomous modes would be able to turn a specific number of degrees. The last thing we'll do on Monday is put the robot in it's shipping bag and lock it up. Apparently it needs to be locked up by Tuesday at 5pm, and we don't think that we'll have any time to work during the day on Tuesday.
Last, but not least I want to thank Team 74 for inviting us to practice at their site today. It was awesome to be out there with so many teams! Thank you Holland C.H.A.O.S!!
Here is our robot with Team 2771 - Code Red Robotics right behind us. I'm not sure what we've run into in this picture, in fact I don't recall seeing this on the field at all...
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| From 2009 Build Season |
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| From 2009 Build Season |
Here is another shot of our robot.
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| From 2009 Build Season |
Our drive team was looking to score on this robot, sorry I don't have a team or number associated with this one. If anyone knows this robot/team, please post a comment. Their robot had a really cool shooter on top.
 |
| From 2009 Build Season |
This was an action shot right before we attempted a score.
 |
| From 2009 Build Season |
We were successful in getting our color tracking autonomous mode working. We were even able to get the sonar working so we have a real good idea of when we are in scoring range. It turned out that when we moved the sonar to a different analog input on the digital side-car, it began giving us correct data. After I left today's practice, our robot did successfully dump at the right time in our color tracking autonomous mode.
Monday we will be fixing a couple switches on the robot that we've wired up incorrectly. These switches allow us to select our autonomous mode for the match. We may attempt a last minute effort to configure our gyro so that other autonomous modes would be able to turn a specific number of degrees. The last thing we'll do on Monday is put the robot in it's shipping bag and lock it up. Apparently it needs to be locked up by Tuesday at 5pm, and we don't think that we'll have any time to work during the day on Tuesday.
Last, but not least I want to thank Team 74 for inviting us to practice at their site today. It was awesome to be out there with so many teams! Thank you Holland C.H.A.O.S!!
Thursday, February 12, 2009
5 Days to Go
We spent another 3 hours at our friend's build site this evening. Code Red Team 2771 invited us back tonight and we couldn't refuse the opportunity to practice on their floor.
I was hoping to have a little more time to sort out some of the programming issues we are facing, but our time tonight was mostly devoted to driver practice. However, we did change how some of the controls work so that it is more user-friendly for the drives.
Our drive team got in some good practice and they're looking stronger and communicating better every time they drive. They're consistently dumping loads of "moon rocks" into moving trailers and their maneuvering skills are quite good.
Tomorrow night we are meeting at the school, and this will probably be the last night of intense programming. I think we are going to devote tomorrow entirely to working out our issues with selecting different autonomous modes, and our problems that have recently arisen in our color tracking code. We're also now having problems reading our sonar. I'm hoping tomorrow I can report that all of those issues are behind us.
I was hoping to have a little more time to sort out some of the programming issues we are facing, but our time tonight was mostly devoted to driver practice. However, we did change how some of the controls work so that it is more user-friendly for the drives.
Our drive team got in some good practice and they're looking stronger and communicating better every time they drive. They're consistently dumping loads of "moon rocks" into moving trailers and their maneuvering skills are quite good.
Tomorrow night we are meeting at the school, and this will probably be the last night of intense programming. I think we are going to devote tomorrow entirely to working out our issues with selecting different autonomous modes, and our problems that have recently arisen in our color tracking code. We're also now having problems reading our sonar. I'm hoping tomorrow I can report that all of those issues are behind us.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Thank You Code Red
Our plan for today was to meet at the school and finish a few things and then for the rest of the week, we'd meet at our friend's build site. Our friends, Team 2771 - Code Red have a great facility and we met there a couple times a week or two ago.
Turns out that the school lost power this afternoon and canceled all evening activities. So we decided to meet at Code Red's site and put in some time testing the robot.
We got in a lot of drive practice and even practiced dumping moon rocks into a moving trailer.
Here are some interesting statistics I noticed tonight:
At this point I think we have completed all essential items for our robot to be "competition ready", and we still have a week to play with it! Sweet!!!
We have put a video of our robot on a new YouTube site: http://www.YouTube.com/creston904 More videos will be added soon.
Turns out that the school lost power this afternoon and canceled all evening activities. So we decided to meet at Code Red's site and put in some time testing the robot.
 |
| From 2009 Build Season |
We got in a lot of drive practice and even practiced dumping moon rocks into a moving trailer.
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| From 2009 Build Season |
Here are some interesting statistics I noticed tonight:
- On average we would pick up about 6 moon rocks before attempting a dump. Typically we'd score about 5 of the 6 moon rocks.
- Our traction control code allows us to accelerate about 25% faster than without.
- Scoring with a "power-dumper" on a moving target isn't as difficult as we thought.
At this point I think we have completed all essential items for our robot to be "competition ready", and we still have a week to play with it! Sweet!!!
We have put a video of our robot on a new YouTube site: http://www.YouTube.com/creston904 More videos will be added soon.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Pictures From Yesterday
I did take a few pictures yesterday while we were in Holland. I decided to wait and post them today when I knew there wouldn't be much to write about. Actually, I left my phone upstairs last night and at blog time I was too lazy to go get it and upload these pictures.
The first picture is of our robot dumping into a trailer. Notice the platform is tilted down and there are lots of balls (moon rocks) in the trailer.
This was during some drive practice. I'm very please with our robots handling capabilities.
This is a close up; the robot was powered down due to a dead battery.
The first picture is of our robot dumping into a trailer. Notice the platform is tilted down and there are lots of balls (moon rocks) in the trailer.
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| From 2009 Build Season |
This was during some drive practice. I'm very please with our robots handling capabilities.
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| From 2009 Build Season |
This is a close up; the robot was powered down due to a dead battery.
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| From 2009 Build Season |
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Our Trip to Holland
First off, I want to thank Team 74 from Holland for letting us use their facilities today to test our robot. They have a fantastic place to build and test, and it was really nice of them to let us have some time on their field.
When I arrived at their building, I was told that our robot was having problems and that nothing worked. Our first assumption was that some wire(s) jiggled out of place on the trip over. We went through all the electronics and everything looked correct.
One of our mentors suggested loading old software on the robot, since we made modifications yesterday and hadn't really had time to test everything. They did, and the old code worked, but didn't have any of the features that we had been working on for the past few weeks.
They began removing code, by turning it into comments, so that our new code would begin to run properly. Once problems have been isolated the code could be "un-commented" so that it would work again.
We were there for 5 hours today, and I really can't say that we accomplished anything, other than fix things that we thought already worked. I suppose if these were problems that we would have faced next week, it was good to resolve them today.
Our drive team did get a good deal of time on the controls today, and I think they're getting a good feel for the robot. I'm very impressed with their driving skills; this was one of the only highlights to the day.
When I arrived at their building, I was told that our robot was having problems and that nothing worked. Our first assumption was that some wire(s) jiggled out of place on the trip over. We went through all the electronics and everything looked correct.
One of our mentors suggested loading old software on the robot, since we made modifications yesterday and hadn't really had time to test everything. They did, and the old code worked, but didn't have any of the features that we had been working on for the past few weeks.
They began removing code, by turning it into comments, so that our new code would begin to run properly. Once problems have been isolated the code could be "un-commented" so that it would work again.
We were there for 5 hours today, and I really can't say that we accomplished anything, other than fix things that we thought already worked. I suppose if these were problems that we would have faced next week, it was good to resolve them today.
Our drive team did get a good deal of time on the controls today, and I think they're getting a good feel for the robot. I'm very impressed with their driving skills; this was one of the only highlights to the day.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Don't Always Believe the Build Team
Thursdays are the one day each week where the entire team meets and we all discuss our progress through the week. Today, our meeting took well over an hour and by the time we got stuff set up to continue our programming, we had about an hour and a half to actually work.
We have worked out all the problems with using source code control. We are making updates to the base code and both of our programmers are writing good code.
Tonight we solved a problem that the build team was blaming on the programming team. We have a motor that will be used to dump the moon rocks out the front of our bin. The motor ran fine in one direction, however when we reversed it, it went incredibly slow. The build team said that we must have programmed it wrong. It turned out that the speed controller, a Victor, was blown. So it wasn't a programming problem, just a bad speed controller. So kids, don't always believe the build team!
It's time for a new picture; this was taken a couple days ago, and our robot actually looked a lot more complete tonight.
Tomorrow night we are having a video game tournament to help determine who will be on the drive team this year. Check back tomorrow for an update on the night of gaming.
We have worked out all the problems with using source code control. We are making updates to the base code and both of our programmers are writing good code.
Tonight we solved a problem that the build team was blaming on the programming team. We have a motor that will be used to dump the moon rocks out the front of our bin. The motor ran fine in one direction, however when we reversed it, it went incredibly slow. The build team said that we must have programmed it wrong. It turned out that the speed controller, a Victor, was blown. So it wasn't a programming problem, just a bad speed controller. So kids, don't always believe the build team!
It's time for a new picture; this was taken a couple days ago, and our robot actually looked a lot more complete tonight.
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| From 2009 Build Season |
Tomorrow night we are having a video game tournament to help determine who will be on the drive team this year. Check back tomorrow for an update on the night of gaming.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
New Picture From 904
We made steady progress both last night and today. We've written code for at least 4 different autonomous modes and I'm sure we'll have more by the time we ship the robot. Preliminary tests have all been successful, but we haven't had an opportunity to fine tune the code for optimal performance.
I'm going to post a picture of our robot showing it's drive train and conveyor system. This picture is a little out of date, but I think it's time to begin showing off our machine.
As you can see, we have chosen the "wide body" design with a 10 wheel drive configuration. Looking at the wheels, this picture must have been taken about a week ago, the night we first drove the robot. We have a conveyor system that will harvest the "moon rocks" and collect them in a bin atop the robot. We will also have a mechanism that will allow us to dump the load in our opponent's trailer.
We just keep sailing along, making good progress every day. I hope we can make it another 3 weeks with the luck that we are having right now.
I'm going to post a picture of our robot showing it's drive train and conveyor system. This picture is a little out of date, but I think it's time to begin showing off our machine.
 |
| From 2009 Build Season |
As you can see, we have chosen the "wide body" design with a 10 wheel drive configuration. Looking at the wheels, this picture must have been taken about a week ago, the night we first drove the robot. We have a conveyor system that will harvest the "moon rocks" and collect them in a bin atop the robot. We will also have a mechanism that will allow us to dump the load in our opponent's trailer.
We just keep sailing along, making good progress every day. I hope we can make it another 3 weeks with the luck that we are having right now.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
FRC 2009 Simulator is now availabe
At kick-off we were informed that a simulator would be available in a few weeks. The simulator will provide a realistic simulation of the this year's game, Lunacy. I just found the link to this and I am installing it as I write this. If you want to download the simulator, follow this link:
http://thinktank.wpi.edu/article/141
We had a good meeting tonight, however there isn't a lot new to report on. We are making good progress and I'll probably include our accomplishments into tomorrow's update.
I also plan to provide a review of the simulator as soon as I get a good understanding of it.
http://thinktank.wpi.edu/article/141
We had a good meeting tonight, however there isn't a lot new to report on. We are making good progress and I'll probably include our accomplishments into tomorrow's update.
I also plan to provide a review of the simulator as soon as I get a good understanding of it.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Build Season is Half Over
Tonight was our first meeting since we hastily tried to run some tests last week that ended with some wires melting. Refer to Friday's post for more info.
We did more brainstorming about autonomous modes; looks like we'll be wiring up a set of switches on the robot that will enable the drive team to select which autonomous mode the robot will run. We came up with a number of variations we would like to implement, so we may need as many as 4 switches mounted on the robot (that's 16 options for the binary challenged).
We also ran more in-depth tests after our "wire-melting" incident last week, and all checked out well for our hardware.
Lastly tonight, we took our time hooking up the control board to the robot, making sure everything was connected correctly (twice). We taped all PWM cable splices and made sure everything was safe before we even connected the battery. Now, with all of our team watching on, mentors included, they waited to see what the computer geeks had been working on for the past 3 weeks.
We connected the battery, booted up the robot controller, downloaded updated software and rebooted. The robot, now live in autonomous mode, waited for us to switch the system to enabled. Immediately after enabling the robot's computer, it began to scan (pan the camera from left to right and back repeatedly ) until we showed it the pink and green colors it was looking for. As soon as the computer recognized the correct color configuration, the camera stopped and was fixed on it. As the colors moved the camera moved, and as the colors moved out of range the entire robot turned and the camera remained locked on the target. It was awesome! and a little weird all at the same time. It's only weird because the robot's actions seemed quite human. I think we've built something that has a personality...
At any rate, the team was quite pleased with our accomplishments.
We've entered the last half of build season, our robot needs to be completed 3 weeks from tonight. Stay tuned, things will start getting good here real soon.
We did more brainstorming about autonomous modes; looks like we'll be wiring up a set of switches on the robot that will enable the drive team to select which autonomous mode the robot will run. We came up with a number of variations we would like to implement, so we may need as many as 4 switches mounted on the robot (that's 16 options for the binary challenged).
We also ran more in-depth tests after our "wire-melting" incident last week, and all checked out well for our hardware.
Lastly tonight, we took our time hooking up the control board to the robot, making sure everything was connected correctly (twice). We taped all PWM cable splices and made sure everything was safe before we even connected the battery. Now, with all of our team watching on, mentors included, they waited to see what the computer geeks had been working on for the past 3 weeks.
We connected the battery, booted up the robot controller, downloaded updated software and rebooted. The robot, now live in autonomous mode, waited for us to switch the system to enabled. Immediately after enabling the robot's computer, it began to scan (pan the camera from left to right and back repeatedly ) until we showed it the pink and green colors it was looking for. As soon as the computer recognized the correct color configuration, the camera stopped and was fixed on it. As the colors moved the camera moved, and as the colors moved out of range the entire robot turned and the camera remained locked on the target. It was awesome! and a little weird all at the same time. It's only weird because the robot's actions seemed quite human. I think we've built something that has a personality...
At any rate, the team was quite pleased with our accomplishments.
We've entered the last half of build season, our robot needs to be completed 3 weeks from tonight. Stay tuned, things will start getting good here real soon.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Wheels in Motion
Tonight was our deadline for having the robot ready to drive, and I'm proud to say that we are right on track. At just about 8pm tonight we put our competition robot for this year on the floor and gently pushed the joysticks and she responded brilliantly. Actually she moved in reverse when we pushed the joysticks forward, but that was fixed with a quick tweak of the software and a download.
Tonight wasn't quite as simple as I made it sound, prior to our rounds of cheering, we downloaded code to the controller board and took it to the shop where our build team is building the robot. The build team took some time mounting the control board on a pair of hinges and when they were done we took the robot to a classroom (with a slippery tile floor) and blocked it up on a table to run some initial tests. Our tests discovered a minor problem (we missed connecting one of the Jaguar speed controllers). Once this was fixed we saw no other issues. It was time to hit the floor.
Our first drive was slow, steady and very controlled. By the end of the session we were pushing it a little to realize our traction capabilities. Our robot has a lot of wheels on the ground. I'm not letting on as to how many right now, probably later. I thought our robot handled quite well considering the environment. About half way through, we hooked up our trailer to the robot so we could see how it would perform pulling a load of "moon rocks". Again, I thought it performed quite well.
I have some pictures, and video that I may post a little later. It's a little early in the season for me to feel comfortable posting too much information. I decided to check the date at which we were driving last season, and we are almost 2 weeks ahead of where we were a year ago.
Milestone "Wheels in Motion" - complete.
Tonight wasn't quite as simple as I made it sound, prior to our rounds of cheering, we downloaded code to the controller board and took it to the shop where our build team is building the robot. The build team took some time mounting the control board on a pair of hinges and when they were done we took the robot to a classroom (with a slippery tile floor) and blocked it up on a table to run some initial tests. Our tests discovered a minor problem (we missed connecting one of the Jaguar speed controllers). Once this was fixed we saw no other issues. It was time to hit the floor.
Our first drive was slow, steady and very controlled. By the end of the session we were pushing it a little to realize our traction capabilities. Our robot has a lot of wheels on the ground. I'm not letting on as to how many right now, probably later. I thought our robot handled quite well considering the environment. About half way through, we hooked up our trailer to the robot so we could see how it would perform pulling a load of "moon rocks". Again, I thought it performed quite well.
I have some pictures, and video that I may post a little later. It's a little early in the season for me to feel comfortable posting too much information. I decided to check the date at which we were driving last season, and we are almost 2 weeks ahead of where we were a year ago.
Milestone "Wheels in Motion" - complete.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Day 1
Yesterday I posted the game animation for this year, and I said that I'd be posting some details about kick off. Well, I didn't get around to posting anything last night, and today I was scheduled to take down the Christmas tree / decorations. Anyhow, Ill try to give a few details about kick off.
I'm not going to go into details about the game, maybe I'll do that later. Our team helped distribute the Kit Of Parts to teams that attended our kick off.
Teams getting their KOP.
After teams got their parts, I attended a very informational presentation on the new control system. Team 141 gave the presentation and I stayed for the portion regarding programming using Wind River and C/C++. A representative from National Instruments gave a presentation on LabVIEW, however I didn't take time to stay for that.
Our team used a spare room to do brainstorming for a couple hours right after the kick off presentation. We would have been better off reading ALL the rules before starting our brainstorming, nevertheless it was interesting to come up with ideas.
After our brainstorming session we went back to look at a mock up of the field.
We had a sheet of the plastic that will be used to cover the field and a mock up of the trailer. Some of our students took shots at trying to throw the ball in the trailer, and that is proving to be a tough shot to make, especially when it's moving.
Today, I hope all the team members took time to read the manual. Tomorrow we meet and continue our brainstorming and hopefully will come up with a drive-train design.
I'm not going to go into details about the game, maybe I'll do that later. Our team helped distribute the Kit Of Parts to teams that attended our kick off.
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| From FRC 2009 Kick Off |
Teams getting their KOP.
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| From FRC 2009 Kick Off |
After teams got their parts, I attended a very informational presentation on the new control system. Team 141 gave the presentation and I stayed for the portion regarding programming using Wind River and C/C++. A representative from National Instruments gave a presentation on LabVIEW, however I didn't take time to stay for that.
Our team used a spare room to do brainstorming for a couple hours right after the kick off presentation. We would have been better off reading ALL the rules before starting our brainstorming, nevertheless it was interesting to come up with ideas.
After our brainstorming session we went back to look at a mock up of the field.
 |
| From FRC 2009 Kick Off |
We had a sheet of the plastic that will be used to cover the field and a mock up of the trailer. Some of our students took shots at trying to throw the ball in the trailer, and that is proving to be a tough shot to make, especially when it's moving.
Today, I hope all the team members took time to read the manual. Tomorrow we meet and continue our brainstorming and hopefully will come up with a drive-train design.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Baby's FIRST steps
Well, it happened yesterday, February 2, 2008. Our little robot took it's first steps. Our team was invited to work with another local team in their huge and fabulous facility. They have constructed an entire full size 2008 Overdrive track and we were able to make the final adjustments that allowed our robot to begin moving.
We actually spent several hours in the morning trying to get all the robot transmitters and receivers to work properly then spent a good chunk of time trying to get our joystick to work. We tried several different configurations in software and nothing seemed to produce the results we were looking for. First the robot would go forward and backward as expected, then when we turned right, it would go left and vice-versa. Nothing seemed to work, until we swapped out the new fancy (programmable) joystick, with a standard model. It turned out that the joystick was programmed different than we expected and was not allowing us to properly control the robot. Once this was sorted out, things began to move.
When we started using the standard joystick, it acted normal and we took it off the blocks and let her go. When it took off, it pulled a little to one side, and was not incredibly fast. We quickly coded up a shifting sequence that allowed the driver to shift the gears in the transmissions, and we were able to get a little more performance from the robot. It still isn't terribly fast and still has some handling problems, but we'll start sorting them out this week.
We will again be testing next weekend and hopefully there will be some corrections that I can report. We're very satisfied at this point with what we've accomplished. We're heading into the final days of our build season and there are most certainly going to be some frustrating moments. Look forward to more posts soon as we really begin burning the midnight oil.
Also, check back soon for more pictures.
We actually spent several hours in the morning trying to get all the robot transmitters and receivers to work properly then spent a good chunk of time trying to get our joystick to work. We tried several different configurations in software and nothing seemed to produce the results we were looking for. First the robot would go forward and backward as expected, then when we turned right, it would go left and vice-versa. Nothing seemed to work, until we swapped out the new fancy (programmable) joystick, with a standard model. It turned out that the joystick was programmed different than we expected and was not allowing us to properly control the robot. Once this was sorted out, things began to move.
When we started using the standard joystick, it acted normal and we took it off the blocks and let her go. When it took off, it pulled a little to one side, and was not incredibly fast. We quickly coded up a shifting sequence that allowed the driver to shift the gears in the transmissions, and we were able to get a little more performance from the robot. It still isn't terribly fast and still has some handling problems, but we'll start sorting them out this week.
We will again be testing next weekend and hopefully there will be some corrections that I can report. We're very satisfied at this point with what we've accomplished. We're heading into the final days of our build season and there are most certainly going to be some frustrating moments. Look forward to more posts soon as we really begin burning the midnight oil.
Also, check back soon for more pictures.
Friday, January 25, 2008
End of Week 3
We are at the half-way point of our build season, and our robot is almost drivable. I took some pictures on Wednesday, however I am going to wait a little longer before posting them to my Flickr site.
As far as the programming and electrical team goes, we've flow charted most of our hybrid mode and have about half of it coded. We are prepared to download hybrid code and drive code whenever the robot is ready (which I think will be either Monday or Tuesday). As soon as it is drivable, the drive team will begin try-outs and soon a team will be picked. They will then practice as much as possible before the ship date.
The team as a whole is fund-raising like crazy. We're selling Yooper bars (a very tasty chocolate candy bar) and we'll also be selling pizza kits in the next week. We're doing can and bottle drives, hoping people will donate their returnables to the team.
Again this year we are attending 2 regional events in hopes that we come up with a win at one (or both) so that we are eligible to attend the Championship in Atlanta. All of these events are very pricey.
Look for a post soon, I'll be blogging about our baby's FIRST steps.
As far as the programming and electrical team goes, we've flow charted most of our hybrid mode and have about half of it coded. We are prepared to download hybrid code and drive code whenever the robot is ready (which I think will be either Monday or Tuesday). As soon as it is drivable, the drive team will begin try-outs and soon a team will be picked. They will then practice as much as possible before the ship date.
The team as a whole is fund-raising like crazy. We're selling Yooper bars (a very tasty chocolate candy bar) and we'll also be selling pizza kits in the next week. We're doing can and bottle drives, hoping people will donate their returnables to the team.
Again this year we are attending 2 regional events in hopes that we come up with a win at one (or both) so that we are eligible to attend the Championship in Atlanta. All of these events are very pricey.
Look for a post soon, I'll be blogging about our baby's FIRST steps.
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