Driver's Training

As promised, we brought our robot to a neighboring teams shop where they had the plastic sheeting on the floor and they offered to let our drive team practice for a few hours.

We had 6 drivers show up that wanted time on the controls to show off their game and possibly be selected as this year's driver. For the first round, we went through all the potential drivers and let them drive the robot for 5 minutes each. This time was used to get them familiar with how the robot handles; the mentors and adults on the team did not judge or evaluate the driver's performance during this time.

After each driver had a chance to practice, we came up with a course that each student must pilot the robot through, which included driving around the perimeter of the field, driving straight down the middle of the field and back up, all with the trailer. After this we had the other students throwing the moon rocks at the trailer and the driver was to avoid them as much as possible. I evaluated each driver based on the number of times they slipped off the plastic and on their ability to back up the robot with the trailer.

Next, we timed them while navigating the same pattern, but we stopped the timer when they completed backing up.

Finally we put the moon rocks on the field and timed how long it took them to drive around and pick up the moon rocks with the conveyor.

It was a good experience for the potential drivers and it gave the adults and mentors a good opportunity to see each driver in action. Our test yesterday, the video game tournament, certainly was a good indicator of how they would perform with the robot.

This picture was taken today, right before we began our driving tests.

From 2009 Build Season

A Night for the Gamers

One of the mentors on our team brought up the idea of having a video game contest to sort out the good prospects for this year's drive team. All the students thought it was a great idea, and I was kinda on the fence about the whole thing. Sure, having quick and steady hand / eye coordination is a key component for a good driver, but there are also a lot of other qualities that a good driver should have.

With that, we decided to go ahead with the video game tournament and also have times where the students would drive the robot and the mentors would have a final vote on who they like for the drivers at the competition.

Tonight we had 3 games and 3 gaming systems that we used as a base for our tournament. We played Need For Speed on an XBox 360, MarioKart on a Wii and finally Crazy Taxi on a Game Cube.

As it turned out, there were a handful of students that proved to be very good at all the video games, and some that were not. It will be interesting to see them all drive the robot and find out if the video game ratings were a good indicator of a good driver.

Tomorrow we are packing up the robot and going to a partial field where the students will be driving and the mentors will be watching.

However we end up picking the drive team, tonight was a lot of fun for the students. They all had a great time.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In the News

I find a lot of interesting articles about FIRST online, especially now, since teams are working hard, both building their robot and also trying to get more media coverage. In past years, teams have been encouraged to contact local government and broadcast media to spectate and or report about FIRST events.

Most print and online articles are typically the same. They start off talking about a local team who are working diligently building their robot, then they go on to explain what FIRST is and why schools are involved. Reporters are writing about FIRST all over the country. There was an article Friday in the Salt Lake Tribune, another on Friday in Democrat and Chronicle from Rochester, New York. There was also an article on Friday on Montana State University's web site. This is just a small sample of articles from one day, and there are seemingly lots of people writing about FIRST.

I'm looking for people, like myself, that blog about FIRST. Blogging is a way for anyone to report about anything, and may eventually change how news is reported. If you or your team has a blog, let me know; leave a comment. I'd like to read other blogs or online content that is more than just an introduction to a team and FIRST.