I just finished uploading a few more pictures of our 2008 competition robot. See my slide-show, they should be showing up there as I uploaded them to my Flickr account.
After spending some time thinking about yesterday's problems, I think I have a real good idea of what was going wrong. I feel much better today about our situation than I did yesterday.
So, check out the pictures, leave a comment, I'd love to get a comment from either this blog or my Flickr pictures. Let me know who you are and all about your interests in robotics.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
we shipped
Tomorrow is the official ship date, however tonight we crated up our robot and sent it on it's way.
We've been working long hours and making little progress. As far as programming goes, we pretty much wrapped everything up for our operator controlled mode on Saturday. Yesterday and today we spent the entire time trying to get our sensors (quad encoders) in the transmission to work. We had them working nicely on our test board, but neither transmission on the robot would give us a signal. The quad encoders are supposed to give us 250 pulses every time the output shaft on the transmission turns over once. All we could get is a lot of 0's.
It's really unfortunate, all our hybrid mode code is based on how far we travel, and the output from the quad encoders is crucial for that.
Anyhow, I want to personally thank Team 288 - the RoboDawgs, for letting us work in there totally awesome works-space. You guys have been incredible!
So, tomorrow the robot is shipped off to our first regional, in Milwaukee. Hopefully before we see it again, we'll have some idea of what we're doing wrong.
We've been working long hours and making little progress. As far as programming goes, we pretty much wrapped everything up for our operator controlled mode on Saturday. Yesterday and today we spent the entire time trying to get our sensors (quad encoders) in the transmission to work. We had them working nicely on our test board, but neither transmission on the robot would give us a signal. The quad encoders are supposed to give us 250 pulses every time the output shaft on the transmission turns over once. All we could get is a lot of 0's.
It's really unfortunate, all our hybrid mode code is based on how far we travel, and the output from the quad encoders is crucial for that.
Anyhow, I want to personally thank Team 288 - the RoboDawgs, for letting us work in there totally awesome works-space. You guys have been incredible!
So, tomorrow the robot is shipped off to our first regional, in Milwaukee. Hopefully before we see it again, we'll have some idea of what we're doing wrong.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Bad weather = slow progress
I can't believe how much time we've worked the robot this past week . It's now Sunday night and I'm trying to remember what all happened this past week. I know we had at least 1 snow day, and the days all kinda blur together. The way the weather looks right now, tomorrow may be another snow day.
Yesterday we met up with our friends at their test track for a full day of testing, driving, programming and a little bit of tearing out the hairs on our heads.
This year our robot is going to be entirely software driven. This means that we will have buttons for the drivers to use, rather than having them make decisions if the elevator (lift mechanism) is high enough or if our gripper is open far enough. We have a plethora of photo-electric sensors on the robot and the software is using these sensors to "know" the current state of the robot. We still use an interactive joystick for steering the robot, but all actions of the manipulator are automated.
So far, we've been doing a pretty good job, but we have to ship the robot in 9 days. This doesn't give us a lot of time to test and drive the robot. This is the way FIRST is though... It puts it's participants in real-life situations where you never have enough of everything you need. Unfortunately, we are working at the school, and if the school is closed due to weather, we cannot meet.
Fortunately I have found a school that appreciates what FIRST is trying to do and has graciously welcomed my family and me. We just can't afford to have any more snow days!
Yesterday we met up with our friends at their test track for a full day of testing, driving, programming and a little bit of tearing out the hairs on our heads.
This year our robot is going to be entirely software driven. This means that we will have buttons for the drivers to use, rather than having them make decisions if the elevator (lift mechanism) is high enough or if our gripper is open far enough. We have a plethora of photo-electric sensors on the robot and the software is using these sensors to "know" the current state of the robot. We still use an interactive joystick for steering the robot, but all actions of the manipulator are automated.
So far, we've been doing a pretty good job, but we have to ship the robot in 9 days. This doesn't give us a lot of time to test and drive the robot. This is the way FIRST is though... It puts it's participants in real-life situations where you never have enough of everything you need. Unfortunately, we are working at the school, and if the school is closed due to weather, we cannot meet.
Fortunately I have found a school that appreciates what FIRST is trying to do and has graciously welcomed my family and me. We just can't afford to have any more snow days!
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.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Sensors, sensors & more sensors!
We had a good meeting tonight.
The weather is really weird, it was close to 50 deg. F this afternoon. It rained all evening, with an occasional rumble of thunder. Now the temp is taking a nose dive, it is currently 30F and is supposed to be in single digits in another hour.
So, everyone at the meeting was hoping for a snow day tomorrow. None-the-less, even if tomorrow does bring weather that is not suitable for school, our team's mentors will still meet.
We made good progress tonight. We successfully read all the rest of our sensors that we attached to our test board. We read the gyro, accelerometer, optical encoders and our infrared input device. Our hybrid mode code is getting close to being done. Now with our newly gained knowledge about sensors, we should be able finish our hybrid code this week.
We're hoping to try some mock testing this weekend. As of today, our robot still has not taken it's first steps, and it looks as if tomorrow may indeed be the snow day of wishes, but Thursday may be the big day.
Current temperature: 28F
The weather is really weird, it was close to 50 deg. F this afternoon. It rained all evening, with an occasional rumble of thunder. Now the temp is taking a nose dive, it is currently 30F and is supposed to be in single digits in another hour.
So, everyone at the meeting was hoping for a snow day tomorrow. None-the-less, even if tomorrow does bring weather that is not suitable for school, our team's mentors will still meet.
We made good progress tonight. We successfully read all the rest of our sensors that we attached to our test board. We read the gyro, accelerometer, optical encoders and our infrared input device. Our hybrid mode code is getting close to being done. Now with our newly gained knowledge about sensors, we should be able finish our hybrid code this week.
We're hoping to try some mock testing this weekend. As of today, our robot still has not taken it's first steps, and it looks as if tomorrow may indeed be the snow day of wishes, but Thursday may be the big day.
Current temperature: 28F
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.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Update - January 22, 2008
Wow, it's been almost a week since my last post. There hasn't been much action to report on; we had a meeting last Thursday for a couple hours and we haven't met since.
Due to yesterday's holiday and today being a snow day, we haven't made a lot of new progress. Last week on Thursday we did write a sample program that runs both autonomous/hybrid mode and a section that runs the drive code that is used to interpret the commands sent from the robot drive team through the radio control.
It's now 2 weeks into the build season, and we have 4 weeks to go. We have our autonomous/hybrid mode flow charted and will begin on that tomorrow night. We're feeling pretty good about where we are right now.
Look for more pictures to show up on my Flickr site soon.
For anyone that may be reading my blog, I am also the designer, developer and administrator for a website that is devoted to introducing people to FIRST. It is a community of students, teachers, mentors and parents that are willing to post videos, pictures, stories, etc. regarding their experiences in FIRST. No matter if you are already involved in FIRST or not, please check out my site; it truly is for everyone!
http://www.firstobjective.org
Thank you!
Due to yesterday's holiday and today being a snow day, we haven't made a lot of new progress. Last week on Thursday we did write a sample program that runs both autonomous/hybrid mode and a section that runs the drive code that is used to interpret the commands sent from the robot drive team through the radio control.
It's now 2 weeks into the build season, and we have 4 weeks to go. We have our autonomous/hybrid mode flow charted and will begin on that tomorrow night. We're feeling pretty good about where we are right now.
Look for more pictures to show up on my Flickr site soon.
For anyone that may be reading my blog, I am also the designer, developer and administrator for a website that is devoted to introducing people to FIRST. It is a community of students, teachers, mentors and parents that are willing to post videos, pictures, stories, etc. regarding their experiences in FIRST. No matter if you are already involved in FIRST or not, please check out my site; it truly is for everyone!
http://www.firstobjective.org
Thank you!
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