World Championships for the 3rd Time in a Row!

We built a robot in just six weeks, shipped it off, and competed twice. Unfortunately, we actually did not leave either one of those competitions as Regional Winners, but we did qualify for World Championships by winning the Engineering Inspiration Award at the St. Louis Regional. Despite not winning a Regional, we were invited to compete in elimination matches in St. Louis as Alliance Captain 2, ending as the finalist alliance, and at the Smoky Mountain Regional as pick 4, ending as a semi finalist. We also won the Delphi Engineering Excellence Award and the Coopertition Award at the Smoky Mountain Regional.

We have learned a lot about what we need to improve before we head to World Championships next week. After the St. Louis Regional, we realized that if we wanted a really competitive robot, then we desperately needed to improve our minibot design. We went from an all Tetrix bot to a Lexan body which cut out almost 4 pounds of weight from the bot. We switched to direct drive which leaves out the gearbox on the Tetrix motors making it extremely faster. The time of our minibot climb went from 5 seconds (including deployment time) to 2-3 seconds (including deployment time).

We felt completely prepared for competition in Knoxville, TN with our new and improved minibot; however, our deployment was too slow and inaccurate. Because of this we lost matches that were easy wins for our speedy minibot. We have spent the past two weeks working on making our minibot even swifter and improving our deployment mechanism.

Originally we had an arm that would swing out allowing the minibot to hit the pole and instantly climb. The drive team found it increasingly difficult for it to be perfectly lined up making it costly in some matches. Now instead of a side arm, we have a tail. This tail, made of thick plywood, will stand at the back of the robot. The tail has a "Y" shape making it easier to line up to the pole when it drops down. And at the press of a button, the minibot releases down a slide track and into the pole. Within 1 second the minibot is deployed and reaches the top of the pole, thus scoring us 30 POINTS! Of course this is only in theory, but theories can always be implemented perfectly.

Our team has worked very hard to make it here and are very proud of our accomplishments. None of this could be accomplished without the support of our coaches, mentors, parents, and sponsors. Our team is always grateful!

Oh wait how could I forget the light bulbs! Dean Kamen does it again by aiding the invention of an amazing light bulb that is environmentally friendly and way more healthier than the light bulbs that contain dangerous mercury. These bulbs are made using LED light and covered in plastic making them virtually indestructible and cost efficient saving a household with let's say 10 light bulbs (assuming all of them were replaced) approximately $50 a year! Our team has begun trying to sell these amazing light bulbs as another type of fundraiser for our team that will aid us in our efforts of spreading FIRST. Hope that we are successful in our final project of the school year.

-LIZ

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Beginning of Week 5!

We have concluded week four and for the first time I think ever..... WE HAVE AN OPERATIONAL ROBOT! Of course it is not completed just yet.... It is just mobile. As build season nears its conclusion, our team is working even harder to make sure that it is complete before the end of week six.

Our programming is nearly complete! The parts for the minibot have arrived and will be put together to form a finally perfected racer. The most important aspect of the minibot project is the deployment arm that was worked on all day yesterday in inventor. Once it is perfected, it will be constructed and ready to work!

Work on the winch and tower are temporarily in waiting while parts are still being fabricated and modified. Hopefully, we will get the parts and have them put together within the next few days. The next and final big project for the robot will be the arm and gripping mechanism. The main concerm with an arm is damage that may come to it during competition. An idea that came up to make the arm more rigid was to put spray on insulation. The idea was generally well-liked and most likely will be put into play when the arm is constructed. The gripping mechanism will then be attached and tested (assuming there is time for us to practice).

A LOT of great work has been done by our team this year and will of course continue! The ten year anniversary of our team will definately be one of the best years FIRST Team 931 has seen yet!

~LIZ

Surviving The Snowdays!

We are finally able to resume building after two snow days! The weather is never ceasing to try to halt our efforts, but it shall not prevail! Despite the students being out of school today, the team still managed to meet. With only six students and five mentors, we accomplished a LOT!

We began to fabricate the pieces to the winch we will use to power the arm based on the inventor drawings that were completed Saturday. Some of the parts and drawings need to be sent to Ranken Tech so that they can be made. Once we receive the completed parts, the winch can then be assembled and hopefully mounted before the end of the week.

Work on the electronics panel continues as the layout is being finalized. Once the layout is complete the wiring will begin! The side panels for the tower of the robot have been cut and polished. Now the plates have awesome swirls all over it and they are all pretty! Once the tower is complete, those plates will be mounted and proudly display the names of our sponsors.

We are coming to the conclusion of week 4 and have made great progress despite all the snow. This Saturday brings on our traditional Hispanic Week! Along with the food on Saturday, we plan to accomplish much with electronics, programming, and tower and arm assembly! Hopefully we will have a completed robot soon!

~LIZ

Build Season 2011 Begins!

We are nearing the end of week three of build season. The excitement and ideas are continuously growing. The name of the game is Logomotion! The idea is to hang tubes in the shape of triangles circles and squares in order to form the FIRST logo. The coolest part about this year's game is that it incorporates components from FLL and FTC to make the game more fun!

Since kickoff, we have decided how we will hang the tubes, nearly completed our programming, finished many of our award submissions, and even gotten a head start on other things we plan to do. At first, the question was arm or elevator to raise the gripping mechanism high enough to score on the high post. The coolest thing ever is how we plan to grip the game pieces (the inner-tubes)! We are using tubing on rollers to grip them and fix their orientation in order to make scoring easier. After nearly a week of discussion, we found an arm design that nearly every one agreed on. The next challenge we faced was whether or not to go with the mecanum wheels or not. The major topic of the discussion was that each wheel was run with a CIM motor and would be a lot of weight and also force us to look for other types of motors and power sources to control mechanisms. We decided the amazing maneuverability provided by the mecanum wheels outweighed the weight issues we may face.

We have constructed a minibot! This one of the new components of the game where we construct a smaller robot out of TETRIX parts, that are normally used for FTC, that is made to climb a 10 foot pole in a race format. Once the bot was created, we decided to design custom pieces to perfect the design of the minibot. Surprisingly it was finished in barely a week. Once the parts are constructed and delivered to us, we will actually rebuild this bot in hopes that it will be lighter and work with amazing precision. The next problem we face is how we will transfer the minibot to the tower so that it can race. Designs began yesterday after days of prototyping! I believe that brings us up to today.

WE GOT OUR CHASSIS TODAY!!! Tomorrow will bring us to the halfway mark of build season and we plan to paint and get our robot running by tomorrow. We have started fabricating our electronics board so we can have an operational robot. Once that is done and we mount the mecanum wheels, the robot will be ready to drive. All that will be left is the tower to support the arm, the arm that will allow us to reach great heights, finalize our gripping mechanism, and the arm that will swing out and deliver the minibot to the tower. That will conclude our robot build, however, there is still many other things to do.

As we conclude week three tomorrow, we will not betray tradition of our lunch themes. This week you may wonder is Asian week. To continuously recognize the diversity represented by our team, we have these themed lunches. I am very certain that everyone is excited about ASIAN FOOD TOMORROW!!

~LIZ!

Update on Competitions

On March 4-6th, team 931 went to the Great Kansas City Regional to compete as defending champions. The competition went very well and we went 9-9-0 in the competition, but don't let that fool you. We brought home the gold with Team 2345 and Team 525, qualifying us for World Championships.

Then on March 18-20th, we competed at the St. Louis Regional. There, we went 4-9-1 and lost in the quarter-finals. But instead of winning the competition, we took home the Regional Chairman's Award, also qualifying us for World Championships. Elena Wyllie was also selected as a Dean's List Finalist, to compete against 91 other Dean's List Winners for 10 Dean's List winners, she wasn't picked but she still got a backpack full of prizes!

We decided to go to World Championships, April 15-17th, in it's final year at Atlanta, Georgia. We were put in the Curie Division and went 6-4-0. We placed 34th out of 86 teams. Unfortunately, we weren't picked to be in the finals, so we got to watch the matches play out and enjoy the last few hours. The celebration was that Saturday night and we enjoyed a very nice display of fireworks!

Tuesday, February 2nd

The second we entered the robotics room, work began on putting the pneumatics cylinder on the puncher. As the day progressed, we placed almost the entire latch and release mechanism, except for the part that connects directly to the pneumatics cylinder.

Prior to robotics, though, we also worked on how to put the electronics board onto the robotics with the gigantic jaguars that we are using instead of victors this year. With the amount of space we have on our robot, we decided to have a, three dimensional board. When we started working on the board, the lack of knowledge on wiring showed like a candle in a dark room, so while we worked on the board, there were random lessons on wire gauges and how much they can take. Then, as we went along, we were taught how to strip wires, put Anderson connectors on them and how to crimp wires.

Then someone asked a rarely asked question. What is a PWM? So we went into a nice ten minute lesson on what a PWM is and now most of our team is educated on PWMs, they might not be able to make one, but at least they can use one now.

And what a beautiful sight was bestowed upon us today. The main chassis was brought today from Ranken Tech. It looks really light and it was flat when we put it on the table. What impressive welders!

~ Chi

It's the first of February and it's time to start actually building!

Continual progress is being made to the chairman's award essay.

Our photographers are taking some nice pictures, too! There are some new pictures on our picasa that you can get to from the right of this blogpost.

Wow, we got some nice memories from that thing! But unfortunately, it's taking up too much space so we had to finally take apart the trailer we made for last year's game. It's really sad taking it apart, though.... Now we have a large, 6 sided fan looking object! And of course, we've also got a lot more space in our back room.

A group of our members is also looking over the rules for the electronics board and laying it out on inventor.

Our righting mechanism is being designed and it can actually extend on both sides of the robot!

~Chi