Robot Shipped!!! what do i do know?
 

Anyone else find them self saying this?

We shipped our robot yesterday and i found myself saying what do i do now?

robotics is life!

now i guess its back to work and have periodical meetings on wensday till competition


ttyl

peace

So build another robot. There are plenty of competitions out there. Pick one and go for it.

Re: Robot Shipped!!! what do i do know?
 

There is always promotions.
Our kids are busy making hundeds of buttons to give out at the competitions.

i plan on finaly getting to play with the edubot kit. And there is always finishing up the controls and getting our decals put together.

I thought it was illegal to work on the controls after the robot ships. I know it's been that way in the past. Can anyone confirm/deny?

controls
 

As stated in update number 15 16 or 14 you donthve to ship it with the robot you can use it to test with you EDU Bot and programming check those updares

Re: controls
 

Yeah, I'm aware of the update thanks... They do not say anything about modifying your control system, only that you're allowed to keep it. There is a difference between not having to ship it and being able to modify it. Please read the posts more carefully.

what do you do now? I don't know about you, but when I was active this is when I would get some sleep.

by finishing up the controls i didn't mean actualy modifying the controls themselves i just need to affix some decals that label our buttons...we dont even have to have it since i am the arm operator and i designed it so i have it all in my head and can do it by feel now...its even something i could do at competition.

Meetings, fundraising (yes we still need money), build other bots, make a controls mount, general strategizing, make t-shirts, and just hang out. And then we always can design a game for next year...

I tried to get a life this weekend. It looks like I'm gonna sleep.

Re: Re: controls
 

are you saying that there is a difference??? That would be like FIRST saying, "You can keep your robot and bring it with you to the first competition; but oh by the way, don't modify anything on it after 2-20-03, a whole month before you first competition, ok?

Re: Re: Re: controls
 

I know you're just trying to be smart, but yeah that's exactly what I mean. I believe they've done that in the past with spares, saying that you don't have to ship them with your robot but they had to be manufactured during the build period.

According to the Jive forums, this year you're allowed to build spares at any time as long as they're identical. Do you think they're going to check every spare part you bring into the arena to make sure it's not an improved version? No. They are trusting each team to follow the rules. They have to. If there was a team who didn't care about the rules there are literally dozens of ways to cheat in this competition. For example, they weigh you in at the beginning of the event and (usually) that's it, right? There's nothing (other than your conscience) stopping you from adding more weight to the robot after you weigh in. Another example: a lot of teams are sponsored by colleges. It would be easy for a college student to pass him/herself off as a high school student in order to operate the robot. As far as I know they don't check IDs.

Anyway my point is that no, I don't find it surprising at all that they might allow you to keep your controls without allowing you to change them.

wouldn't changing the program inside of it sort of be like modifying it also?

Well, of course you're talking about the RC not the OI here, so you can't actually change the program inside of it until you get there since it was shipped with your robot. You can of course rewrite the program in between. This is a fuzzy area that luckily FIRST has clarified by explicitly allowing programming changes after shipping.

Make a scouting strategy!!! Scouting is an important and oft overlooked dimension of FIRST. If you already have scouting all figured out, make pretty things (buttons, signs, interesting noise makers). You can never have too many pretty things.

SLEEP!!!! I am going to catch up on Sleep!!!! and then im gonna go back into the shop and start working on my Battle Bot with my team. One way or another can't get ride of robotics!

:ahh:

A FIRST team operating a battlebot?

I am hallucinating, hallucinating, hallucinating...

BBIQ
 

Yes,!! there are FIRST teams that operate Battle Bots!! lol
I am on one of them! Out of the 10 kids on my FIRST team, we have 3 different Battle Bot teams! We work with some Engineers that have done FIRST since they were back in High School in 97, and do Battle Bots as well! This is my 2end year doing Battle Bots, but its Battle Bots IQ. Its the High school version. Very similar to the adult version, and my team has one sweet spinner!! One day they will coexists. :ahh:

can u share any more info about this robot IQ program?

Sure!! Well the whole IQ comp is a based around Middle weigh robots! Just like the middle weight division of Battle Bots would be. Also the competition this year will be held April 3rd-7th in California. Need more into?? contact Nola@battlebots.com (National Education Advisor)

What did I do with the time I wasn't working before first?
maybe I .. wait no that was robotics too.. hmm

Re: Robot Shipped!!! what do i do know?
 

You can start thinking about the DARPA Grand Challenge.

Basically, you have a year to design a vehicle that can autonomously drive the roughly 250 miles from Barstow, CA (a town in the Desert, just outside of Los Angeles) to Las Vegas, NV in less than ten hours. The course is a mix of paved street, dirt road, dry lake bed, water crossings, and cross country desert terrain. Did I mention that they don't give you the course waypoints until just two hours before the race starts :ahh:? Oh, and the prize is one million dollars.

I attended the kick-off conference yesterday and found an odd mix of attendees composed of highly starched military brass, professional and amateur robotics geeks, spooky DARPA types, very serious desert off-road racer types, including the CEO of SCORE International, which is the governing body of just about all off-road racing in the world. Oh, yeah, the press was also there. I made the mistake of talking with one of them while they had a tape recorder going :). Looks like the Discovery channel is also gonna do a documentary on this as they had cameras everywhere