Robotics Team Structure

Getting Close to Robo-Time...

Robot Shipped, one last pic

This was taken well before the robot shipped but I didn't get around to uploading it. It's one of my favorites, so I thought I post it anyway. It shows the chain drive that powers the shooting column. As the moon rocks travel up the shooting chamber, each roller it encounters is moving faster than the previous set, thanks to the gearing shown here. With the creative routing of the chains, a single motor is able to power both sides of the rollers (one rolling counter-clockwise, the other clockwise).

Winter Driving Season Almost Over...Please?

I'm about done with this. And this photo was from the previous snowstorm. Since that one, we've had another that arrived at the perfect time to scramble traffic.

Robot Construction Update, Integration Test

The robot subsystems are getting close to being integrated. As a visualization exercise, we stacked the parts close to where they will be on the finished bot.

Starting from the bottom, the drive train assembly (this was taken a bit ago but provides a good "baseline")


Next comes the electronics board "drawer". This was originally conceived to be a slide out drawer for easy access, but has since been redesigned with doors around the robot allowing access to reach in to the components rather than sliding the drawer out.


Next comes the Collector. This subsystem picks 'moon rocks' up from the floor and lifts them into a storage area. The rollers seen here will be underneath a band of material the 'moon rocks' (Orbit Balls) cling to.


Finally, the shooter. Still mounted in the plywood prototype, the shooter is a geared assembly, with each roller increasing speed, propelling the 'moon rocks' out of the top. Not shown is the hood and turret assembly, controlled by a camera to target the direction the moon rocks are thrown.

Robotics Drive Test

Just a quick note on robot construction.

The team hosted a programming workshop for 5 other teams. 4 hours of coding hands-on and idea sharing followed by tours of the construction process; everyone seemed to have a good time.

Build on the robot's test frame wrapped up with a quick drive test. The programmers were testing out several different acceleration algorithms to cope with the slippery surface the 'bot will see in competition.

Robo Prep Continues...

Preparation for the FIRST robotics build season continues. A test board has been assembled and refined. Tomorrow the game will be announced, then the plotting, planning, designing, constructing and revising will begin.

For now, this is how the test board looks. The actual robot is not expected to look anything like what is seen here, this is just a test platform.

Robotics Update

On a totally different note, the robotics team is transitioning to C++ this year from straight C. The communications system between the robot and driver control station is 802.11n. Each robot forms an on-board network between its controller (cRIO from National Instruments), camera (etherlink connected), and uses a game controller to talk back to the hub (Linksys/Cisco 802.11n wireless router). The router sits back at the "driver station" so it has access to line power to drive the router. Two USB joysticks (logitec) provide operator control.

I beg to differ

I had a backlog of InformationWeek newsletters to browse and had a slow moment so I dove in. Here is what popped up:

Google's upcoming Android mobile platform could spur consumers to widely adopt smartphones, according to new research from ABI Research.

The report, titled "Smartphone And OS Markets," said Google's platform could push smartphones toward standardization, which could eventually push smartphone adoption beyond the 14% market share it currently holds.

Maybe that is an idea that can only be accepted as true if the reverse is also true. The reverse would be that the lack of standardization has impeded adoption. I'm not buying it. Standardization in this context is referencing the operating system of the phones. We (referring to people of the planet Earth) have several operating system choices for phones; Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm, Blackberry, Apple, and Android (probably others too, but you get the idea). The research seems to imply that if we could only have one more people would buy them.

When has that ever worked?