Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Well we're into week 2 now, where's your robot?

This'll be just a quickie poll that I'll be try to be posting weekly until ship date just to get a general idea of where things in general are. Do teams strictly adhere to the FIRST suggested schedule, or do they daydream for the first 4 weeks, panic, and slap something together in the last 2? I've kind of been curious about this. So please, enlighten me.


(Ignore error in poll)

Re: Week 1: Where's your Robot?
 

umm still in a box and im not talking about the shipping crate =)

Re: Week 1: Where's your Robot?
 

Some of our robot is in the heads of each of the team members. A good portion of it is on the heardrive of my computer. A couple parts of it are in Indiana at AndyMark. ;) Some of the parts are over in Florida at Small Parts. Some of the parts are up in northern California at Robot Marketplace. A few more parts are down in LA at McMaster. And some of the metal is right in our very own shop.

Parts ordering starts Wednesday night. Fabrication starts beginning of week 3.

Re: Week 1: Where's your Robot?
 

... on the paper that is on my desk infront of me. :)

:: opens inventor::

Re: Week 1: Where's your Robot?
 

From what I here from those gearheads down in Chandler, our robot is currently on a drawing table of some sort. I don't know why they would put it there, but it's not my place to judge.

Traditionally (a tradition I helped found :)) our team does dream for at least the first three weeks, working on wooden prototypes of arm designs and chasses. The build process is a gradual one from weeks 4 to 5 of having enough robot built to test the mechanical components and spin the wheels some, and then lots of all nighters during week 6 to secure the wiring and get everything to fit inside that stupid box!

Hopefully since we're now an experienced team we'll have a better build schedule this season. ::crosses fingers::

Cool thread idea!

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Far enough to suprise :D

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

At the moment, Occam's Razor (the new hotness from 1293) has the frame and transmissions (both kitbot) assembled and mounted. The current holdup is our traction device, which we should be settling upon tomorrow night.

I can't wait to take a crack at this new IFI breaker panel.

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Robot what robot? :ahh: :ahh: :ahh:

jk :D

Surprisingly we have the frame of the robot about 95% of the way done.. We
are just waiting for some parts to shipped to us.. (tires, sprockets, bearings)
you know stuff we should of ordered a few days ago.. but with our luck we are
going to find some fatal flaw in our design and fall behind like we normally do..
;) Im hoping that we can have our robot driving under power in a few days **crossing fingers**

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

We have our frame built completely and our arm structure completed. In order to make it expend and retract requires 3 holes and appropriate bolts. However, we have a lot of parts to order, wheels, shaft, sprockets, some pneumatics, a lot of stuff...but we're on schedule so...we should be done middle of week 3.

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

the base is coming good... the arm (if we have one or maybe two) is still in the heads of many... slow starts for TJ... but we will pick up pace soon...

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

The robot chassis is still on a bunch of scratch paper :ahh:
We built the kit bot w/tranny and are developing the basic program. We have a camera that will pan, track and recognize colors.

Wayne Doenges
CAD Mentor

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Is it bad not to have any of the actual parts ordered or started to be built yet? Would that classify us as behind? If we did not cut any metal until Sunday, would that make us behind?

In Inventor: Gearbox design is done, chassis is half way, arm is just started. Is this behind?

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

part of it ... not all of it but some of it... is kinda on paper somewhere but mostly on the board ... so i say robot... what robot... :ahh:

I am losing sleep over hw behind we are ... we are just having trouble reaching a design everyone can agree on. But in 12 hours we will have the design finalized, I hope . Please? :o

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Team 123, Cosmos, Hamtramck, MI: We have our transmissions and motors mounted. Just gotta do wiring, add a couple sprockets, and then build our design to manipulate the tetras. We're 2 weeks ahead then we've ever been my teacher told me ;) Usually, at this time we'd be building transmissions.

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

So far we've gotten our chassis/gearboxes in inventor and our manipulator design on pieces of paper all over the place. We should start cutting and putting things together this Wednesday. Are we behind? I'm not sure yet. We have almost everything designed this year before we start building. This should eliminate most of the, "I wonder where this should mount?" or "Hmm...where should we put the battery?" This year our design is a bit more ambitious than previous years but if all goes well I think we are going to be a major competitor (nothing wrong with a little optimism :) ). Look out for us at Peachtree, Boilermaker and the Champs.

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

We've got 70% of the design drafted in inventor, the rest on paper. Still finalizing the CAD end...
We have our Transmission and Chassis complete (kitbot) and we've just got the controls and arm left. Whew, we're running ahead of our schedule!
BTW, this is our teams first year using inventor, and my first year drafting up the (entire) bot. It's REALLY helping!

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Bottom part of robot (frame, transmission, wheels (new fancy ones), etc.) are mostly completed and we hope to have electronics to put in within a week so we can drive it around (vroom!)

Unfortunatly, arm is still in design phase *sigh*

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

I am dismayed at the blatant bias against programmers in the poll. Why is it assumed that the robot must be built before the software can be done? Yesterday we had a program but nothing to run it on, so the software team and electrical team hacked together a simple chassis to test out the vision tracking.

The competition 'bot is being CADded up, and there's a group putting together the kit chassis for prototyping. But the software is already running and driving (and following green, if a little erratically).

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Drive train & electrical components installed, testing underway. Crane/arm prototype built, revisions required. We are using a telescoping arm, but its way to massive. EOC

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

-Basic idea is up
-claws going through prototyping
-Arm drawn in solid works, ready to be examined and built
-drive train done
-chasse under construction

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

As for 638, we're almost done CADing, as per the "requirements" of the game we've developed an arm to lift tetras and a sweet drive train based on the 4 CIMs and the FIRST Gearboxes. We've also begun parts ordering for the chassis and static segment of the arm.

Hopefully with a more experience design and build team this year we'll be able to stick to a solid schedule and get this thing done.

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

our cadding is seriousl behind sadly, what with our cad leader being off sick since the 2nd day of the xmas holidays and yet to return...

But otherwise we are massively ahead of schedule in relation to our teams history... maybe its b/c we have less experienced people?
last year we had nothing built until the week before because we had too mayn good ideas lol!

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Our chassis and associated gearboxes are designed, though construction has yet to start on any final parts. We have prototypes in both full- and small-scale of mechanisms and the entire robot, respectively. I have a good idea of what I'd like to do for the remaining parts that are yet to be designed, but the rest of the team is examining alternate solutions to ensure that we use the simplest, most efficient design possible.

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

1504: We don't have any materials or a machine shop. We have a great chassis design and (in my oppinion) a pretty sketchy gripper design, but no way to build either.

I'm kind of worried...

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

We have decided what our manipulator is gonna do and how its gonna do it but we haven't defined our chassis design. Its a little backwards but in past years our chassis and manipulator teams have been working against each other rather than with so compared to where we usually are and progress is better than none.

As for CAD we have some rough sketches in Inventor and we will start to finalize the manipulator ones today and the chassis ones within the week.

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

He is lying, we had our robot done the same day as the kickoff :D . lol, ok, i guess he isn't lying. :D

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

The CAD work is pretty much done on our base. We have plans for the arm drawn up on paper, and we'll be putting those into CAD during the week. We're going to try to start building the chassis this week or weekend, and start the arm by next week, sometime.

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

We've built the basic lower frame (okay, so we're using the kitbot). We're still in the process of designing the arm, but have a fairly decent idea of what we want to do. We're also starting to test out the camera.

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Well...our bot has been planned, made accurate measurements apon, and our chassis is being created and with a rough electronics board. In comparison to last year, our first year, this year's bot is "lightyears away from last year" as our instructor said. As for inventor, we still need a lot of work on that. :)

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Well, maybe this will make you feel a bit better: our team hasn´t even RECEIVED our kit yet. <huge sigh> ...it´s out there somewhere, who knows where, but the only thing that matters is that it´s not in our hands... :mad:
Based on this...make your own conclusion as to what stage our robot is at :D !!!

Fortunately there´s other things that can be worked on...worst part is, we´re already a week short!! i hope it won´t take much longer, but all we can do is wait. patiently. :(

good luck to all teams!!!

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

We are all set bulit field and all we are currently testing drivers and building a play book

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Kitbot has been modified and built to our specs. Parts are being ordered for the tetra retrival device and the program is being written and tested. the robot will be driveable tonight probly. :)

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

hmmmmm robots oh yea we are stuck on weather to build a 25ft arm or make it into a helicopter

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Our robot is far from being closed to functioning. The chassis is in pieces, we did put together the kit transmissions. The subsystem design is currently being finisihed. Hopefully by Thursday I will have a little bot scooting around the floor.

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Our robot is moving along nice and spiffy. All we need to do is throw all our ideas together and BAM!, we have a robot. :cool:

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Our chassis design is done, and has been sitting at the machine shop for the past week..(i dont think well ever get it back).. the arm..now thats a completely different story.. we attempt to get one design somewhat finalized and someone runs in with a 'reality check' or a out-of-the-box idea, that we throw out after 5hrs of discussion...
anyone on 617- NO MORE ARM DESIGNS!!!- or we wouldnt finish it before next years kickoff much less end of Feb!
j

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

We are further along then we were in week one.. :p ...starting to build basic parts...and we will work from there :] See you in ATL!

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Our robot is drawn on paper and partially CAD'd out.

They are deciding the exact mechanisms as we speak.

Last year at this time, we had almost decided we wanted to manipulate balls.

--Petey

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Have you heard of the team that never received there robot at a competition, and they ended up building a robot in 1 day?? I would say when comparing 5 weeks to 1 day, 5 weeks is a lot better (just trying to make you feel better). However i would be kind of mad to if we didn't have our kit by now.

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

well we are in the middle of prototyping about 3 arms and the chassis drawing are complete and we're working on the controls too-- but otherwise we seem to be going well

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Several basic designs are down and hopefully we will have a final design by this weekend and we can get building soon.

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

We drank a bunch of Mountain Dew on the 9th of January, and just started workin'.

Finished the robot last night about 11 PM.

Picked up by FEDEX at 3 PM today.

On its way to that 'drayage' company now, holding it for the Central Florida Regional in MArch.

Not sure what we will do until the 22nd of February. This has never happened before. :)

PS - please add another voting button for "SHIPPED!".

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

due to my teams lack of dedication and time in the shop, much of the kitbot is still in the crates. We will be lucky if we have a bot at all by ship date

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Well for once in 14 years of FIRST our team has actually made a paradigm shift and started building in the first week with a goal of having a completed system done by this Saturday. My goal since I started 6 years ago was no allnighters. I 've spent the first year 3 allnighters straight with my very own hammock at our build site before the ship date. After that my goal was clear.

So hopefully we'll even have driver practice on the robot and maybe have time to build a whole practice bot for spares.

We can only dream I guess but at least we're making the attempt. I head the drives team this year and my subteam has completed the whole thing and actuially driving it last Saturday since everyone wanted to go home and watch football.


Ellery :yikes:

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

I'll add that for the week 3 post. Holy crap I didn't expect anyone to get close to something like that :). Is it any good? I mean that's three weeks that you could be using exclusively for practice or autonomous programming or something. I'd love to see pics.

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Ummm... we have 2 tets, and the chasey built, but we didn't have enough parts to finish the transmission. :ahh: ^^;;

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Lets see... We(team 1598) have gotten the chasis built, and are working on an arm. :-D Should be decent for a first year team... Lol

Re: Week 2: Where's your Robot?
 

Well we did some sketches, had the usual drive/auxilary debate over who gets what chasis space, and realized that our sketches could not work with drive team's chasis. So, we are now rethinking our design for the arm while drive gets ideas for their gearbox. :D