We're Finally Wireless

Tonight we finally got back to our bench top test that we started back before Christmas. When we last worked on this, we were able to control the cRIO and drive our motors, but everything was tethered together with network cables. We hadn't configured our wireless network, nor had we downloaded any custom software to the controller.

Tonight we finished up the final few steps in the "wired" bench top test and then moved on to configuring the wireless network. In the wireless configuration we have a standard 802.11n router that is plugged into the driver station. The driver station is where we plug in the joysticks and this broadcasts our commands through the router to the robot, wirelessly.

From FRC 2009 Hardware

We have a network bridge that sits on the robot and is connected to the cRIO. The bridge communicates with the cRIO and other devices on the robot, such as our video camera. The cRIO also is responsible for running the software and eventually controlling the motors.

From FRC 2009 Hardware

Again, my advice for any team working through this process is to follow the directions completely and in order. We got ahead of ourselves at a few points which caused a little bit of troubleshooting, but in the end we worked through all the problems.

From FRC 2009 Hardware

We finished up tonight by downloading some customized code and proving that our changes were indeed working. We have accomplished a lot and have had only minor issues with the new hardware. Had we followed the directions, I doubt that we would have had any issues.

I am also happy to say that almost all of the work tonight was done by our students. They were able to modify the hardware and software as we needed and all of their efforts proved successful. We have a great team this year and I'm proud of our students for working hard, asking questions and solving problems. That is really what FIRST is all about.

Day 3

This evening our team met again for 3 hours to finalize our chassis and overall robot design. We've come up with what looks like a simple design, both from a fabrication point of view as well as the systems we will control via software.

With that in mind, we spent the last hour and a half brainstorming programming ideas. We have lots of great ideas and I hope we have enough time to experiment with all of them. I'd like to see our team get more involved in automating a lot of processes, but we have little time to make all of this work.

Our entire programming / electrical team consists of 4 students, 2 of which are interested in electrical and the other 2 are interested in programming.

Tomorrow we will be finishing up our testing with the new hardware, taking many pictures of our configuration and then dismantling it so that the electrical guys can put it together on the robot. Tomorrow, look for more pictures of our bench top test configuration.

Day 2

Our team met again this evening for about 2 1/2 hours. We tossed around a lot of ideas about handling the moon rocks. At the end of our meeting we still hadn't determined if we want to pick up the rocks or herd them back to the re-fueling station for the payload specialist.

We talked about a few different chassis ideas, and I think we made a final decision, however I'm not going to go into details yet. This years challenge requires us to use wheels which have an extremely low coefficient of friction on a surface that is similar, however the playing surface has a very small pebble texture. This makes it even more difficult, as even less surface area from the wheels will actually be in contact with the floor.

As was the situation last year, we are again facing the same issues of everyone on the team wanting to design the "ultimate" robot; the robot that can do everything in the game. Trying to do this results in a very complex mechanical design as well as some very complicated software to accomplish some of the automated functionality. I prefer simple and elegant.

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.

From FRC 2009 Kick Off

Teams getting their KOP.

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.

Lunacy

I just returned from kick off and this years competition is called "Lunacy". In commemoration with the 40 year anniversary of landing on the moon, we're playing a "moon game" this year. I guess that ties in the reference to the Moonfish.

Here is this years game animation



I took a few pictures and will be posting them along with more of description of our experience later tonight.

2009 FIRST Robotics Competition Kick Off

It's hard to describe what tomorrow means to people involved in FIRST Robotics Competition. Tomorrow is the official kick off to the new season, and this means many things.

It means that if you are involved in FIRST the next 6 weeks of your life will be among the busiest you'll have. Each team has the same 6 weeks to design, build, test and program a robot, which as of today we still don't know what the robot is supposed to do.

Kick off also means that we learn the new game. This is important and it is sometimes a hard thing to describe to people that do not know about FIRST. Imagine if you went into a high school and selected the 30 best athletes. You had all of September, October, November and December to train. It would not be till the beginning of January that the sport (or combination of sports) would be announced, then they'd have 6 weeks to perfect their moves and plays.

I'm sure everyone knows some high school somewhere that takes football a little too seriously; the athletes on the team do almost anything to win, sometimes the coaches too. They do this because it has a lot of meaning to them and it is something that they want to be proud of.

The students that participate on FIRST teams have this same sort of drive to compete and win, although FIRST makes sure to inject a healthy dose of Gracious Professionalism into every student, teacher, mentor and parent. This means that teams do their best to win, but it MUST be fairly. In fact when teams are working on their machines before a competition, teams will often help other teams, even if they know they are going to be opponents in an upcoming match.

There is an atmosphere about FIRST that I've never seen anywhere, and I know the world would be a better place if all of our leaders held these same values.

Back to Kick Off - it starts tomorrow morning, and if you're interested you can watch the same live feed that we will be watching. It will be broadcast online at this website:

http://robotics.nasa.gov/events/2009_frcwebcasts.php

The web cast starts tomorrow (Saturday January 3) at 10:00 am EST.

Top 5 List - Number 1

Happy New Year Everyone!

Now for the number 1 robot / team of 2008...





#1

The 2008 world champions - Team 1114 Simbotics From Ontario Canada. Team 1114 designed an extremely elegant and effective robot. Their method for picking up the Track Ball was well designed as was their shooter. Every match (that I saw) they outscored everyone on the field. I watched via Internet stream as they competed in Chicago, and unfortunately, that was the only time I was able to see this team.

Best of luck to Team 1114 in 2009!