Author: Fletcher

Attendance

•  Mark
• Hunter
• Evan
• Fletcher
• Dante

Journal

Tasks

• Work on notebook
• Switch out lift motors
• Shoot explainer video for fork lift
• Remount IR sensor

Reflections

Mark worked on the notebook and completing the design process page of the notebook.  It details the different parts that we’ve built for our robot, both the ones we have applied in competition and the ones that we have not.

At the tournament we hosted on Saturday (2.2.13), we presented the colors during the flag ceremony by raising the scissor on our robot.  It all went horribly wrong when a screw got caught on a nut and the scissor bent sideways.  As a result of this, all four of our scissor motors have yet again been smoked.  We asked Mr. Dobson for new motors, and he gave us four that he found in his tool box that had already been used. As it happens, these were in the set of motors that we had broke last time we needed new motors, and they therefore did not work.  We asked Mr. Dobson for four new motors, and he kindly gave us replacement motors, but said that we ought to give him money for all eight of the motors he’s given us.  We are now considering various companies to become our motor sponsor.

Due to the frequency that we break motors, Mr. Dobson created a broken parts bucket where motors, servos, and game controller that have been broken for various reasons will be tossed.  The parts in the buckets, however, will not be thrown away.  As a summer project, people are invited to fix these parts and possibly make them better (though they would not be used on a robot due to modification of electrical components being illicit).

Once the motors were mounted, we moved on to filming for our fork lift explainer video.  Two takes had to be filmed due to Evan forgetting to say our team name, and an additional take had to be shot to highlight the capabilities.  The video is viewable here.

Attendance

• Fletcher
• Evan
• Dante
• Hunter
• Mark

Journal

Tasks

• Hear Dr. Stroupe speak
• Learn more about robotics in the real world

Reflections

Dr. Ashley Stroupe, a driver for the MER Mars rovers, came, so we all went to Mr. Dobson’s room to hear her speak.  Mr. Dobson had given us pizza and soda to eat during her presentation.

At the beginning of her presentation, she decided to ask us a special question because we all did robotics.  She asked, “What makes a robot a robot?”  Some of our responses were, “They never work,” “They have programming,” and “They have electronics.”  She then continued to the rest of her presentation.

She talked about some of the things the MER rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have done.  She mentioned that they were intended as 3 month missions, but Spirit went 6 years and Opportunity is still going after 10 years.  She also brought up how she drove the rover.  Because there is a several minute long delay before information can be transmitted between Earth and Mars, the Mars rovers can not be driven in a TeleOp fashion.  Everything they did was autonomous.  They have an interface to drive the rover in where they give the rover a path, and the rover will drive on that path.  On the way, if the path goes over an obstacle, the robot will drive around the obstacle without being asked to by the drivers.  They can also drive the rover by looking at pictures the rover takes and selecting point to which the rover will drive.

The MER rovers take pictures in a non-standard way.  Because the scientists want as high resolution pictures as possible, the cameras take one picture where only data for red colors is taken, a blue picture is taken, and a green picture is taken.  Because not much movement occurs on the Martian surface, there will not be too much difference, though she showed us a picture where a dust devil was in frame and the red photo and the green photo caught it in different places.

At the end of her presentation, she talked about her education.  She majored in astronomy and went to graduate school to study paleoanthropology.  She found that it was difficult to get funding for the study of ancient humans, so she decided to switch to robotics, in which she got her Ph.D.  We enjoyed having Dr. Stroupe come.

Attendance

• Fletcher
• Dante
• Erik
• Chris
• Hunter
• Evan
• Mark

Journal

Tasks

• Get Samantha so we could control robot over Wifi
• Driver practice

Reflections

We had a simple goal for this meeting: practice.  When Mr. Porter came with the robot, Hunter and Fletcher got to work trying to connect the robot to a wifi, but did not succeed.  Farr and Bugert from the Deadbolts, team 4153, tried also, but came to similar results.  Both the Deadbolts and we ended up just driving the robot with a wired connection.

We found that we could easily get six rings on the top row like so:

The Deadbolts also got their rings on like this:

We found that what the Deadbolts were doing was very good.  We practiced our end game on them (as their robot was light — 11 lbs rather than the 20.9 that had broken our scissor lift previously)

Because of their lightness and ring scoring abilities and our IR capabilities, end game ability, and ring scoring abilities, the Deadbolts would be a serious consideration for us if we were a chooser in final alliance selection.