Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

We are pretty far behind, unfortunately. Our design team just started modeling our robot on Pro-E. We have the camera working smoothly, and we just finished our mock-up of our launching mechanism. It's amazing.

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

We are shooting balls and moving around just fine time to practice our buts off!! :yikes:

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

our board with all of the electronic parts hasn't even touched the robot yet! :cool: hopefully we will get it on the robot soon.

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

max that ball MAX capacity 149.
but still. are you serious? jeez.... so far we have. a nicely done aluminum frame done. and plenty of ideas.

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

Note that this is not a real world maximum capacity. I would love to run cosmos (an add-on in SolidWorks) on the simulation and see where the balls lie in natural rest position. I could prolly get 150 at least in there. Maybe 160 *doube the amount available during one match*. :D

The way I put them in was to stack them nicely.

When is the last time you saw balls stacked nicely (re: neatly) in a FIRST robot that looked like a box???

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

oh i dunno.. in 1,2 weeks or so i think. depends on how fast i wanna work.

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

why does it matter, realistically even a really good harvester is not gonna hold on to more than oh say 40-50 balls at any given time of the match. Something that can hold that many loosely is more than good enough. Considering any ball you score is up to the opponent alliance to put back into field, chances are you'll never get close to having all 80 balls of the field. Plus if you did have all the balls, it's fairly obvious to the other team they can put all their defense on just your robot to stop you from scoring, instead of trying to block several.

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

We had a productive day today. One of our mentors showed up, and he gave me my first experience with magic smoke and fused wires today. It's a good lession to learn early.

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

I have to agree with that, with only six weeks to build you are always behind schedule :eek:

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

Though you really aren't ever far enough

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

Let me clarify a bit. This mentor is ME. I am a structural engineer so I don't belong near wires =) While testing out the light and seeing how the camera was tracking, some unprotected portions of the light wires shorted and...well...some melted wire, glowing leads, partially burned fingers (mine), and lots of smoke later, many lessons were learned! Not one of my better moments... :ahh:

In an unrelated note - will the team be penalized if an opposing robot happens to lock onto my bald spot as our camera did today?? :confused:

Kev

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

okie dokie! time for an update, we just finished 90 percent of our robot base just need to decide now where to mount motors...

*our drivetrain is mostly inside our frame...* HEHEHHEHEHE

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

I think it depends on if they relentlessly pummel you with balls...:D

We have a semi finalized drive train, (drives nicely), with plates designed and ready to be punched for our 1st stage of mechanism. As of today. 4 weeks left... It sounds like more time if you say a month.

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

as of today, our third prototype works! :D launched about 25 feet with .75in of pressure on the ball...

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

Well our team is on schedule compared to usual. First week is spent deciding what we want our robot to do. Second week is spent working on brainstorming. Third-fourth week is spent on designing the robot and machining parts at the same time. Fifth week is spent finishing building the robot. And finally the last week is tweaking the robot and practicing.

By the looks of it this year we’re going to have one crazy robot. We plan on being able to shoot a ball from our robot about every half second (can’t tell you how just yet but wait and see). The robot should have good pushing potential but were looking to just be able to maneuver around them and just unload our robot as fast as possible. The ramp is an obstacle we’re not looking forward to. I don’t know how many teams out there would agree with me but we think the ramp isn’t that important. We don’t have a name for the robot yet this year but people are thinking about naming it Gemini (hint hint) although a few people would like it to be called “Kachunk Chunk” or “Spinning Blades of Doom”.

But right now were going over a lot of calculations to make sure our robot will do exactly what we want it to do. We figure that if we spend two weeks designing the robot and looking over everything three or four times before we build then we shouldn’t have to do much work later.

We did do a prototype so see how accuracy is affected by certain variables. The shooter threw the ball about a dismal 3 feet but that’s all we needed. We also made a machine to help us decide on what material to use for our belting in the conveyor system, we have hope for the material you use to hold down rugs to hardwood floors (works very good and is pretty durable). Nothing is set in stone except for our overall design, no specifics yet but we’re almost there.

Overall our robot is shaping up. I have high hopes for this one. This should be a very interesting game, were going to need to change the battery after every match. That camera sucks up so much power, and with all these motors running our battery should have some fun. Until I can release more details, this is it for now.

Good luck to all teams!

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

well we came up with this really cool see-saw design to move the balls to the shooter, but as a consequence we couldn't use the kit bot, which though primitive is really strong if put together right. for motors we are gonna end up using either cim motors with DeWalt transmissions for the most power. if the finance goddess blesses us, we might put 4 cims for extra power. we like push power :D especially with the defence quarter thing. we did that last year, so we are just waiting on parts

i made a shooter merely using the old bot for a platform and the softball launcher design. separately we got the camera to work after much tinkering.

are we the only team having problems with the camera locking onto ceiling lights as well as the target?

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

You are not the only team that has this problem. This should be a problem for all teams. This is because the florescent lights give off a green hue as well as other hues. The camera will pick these up and then target them. At most places where the competitions have been held (I know for sure at Great lakes and Buckeye) the lights there give off a red hue. It took us a while to figure that one out last year.

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

also the CMUcam is pretty good at seeing UV light, and the florescent lights give off quite a bit of that (hence they're modified for use in tanning salons)

How complete is your robot
 

sorry if a thread for this has already been made, I've just been wondering and the pictures in the gallery isn't really showing half-way done robot.

Re: How complete is your robot
 

Why should the gallery show a half way done robot? My theory is, if your robot is half way done (in fabrication) right now, you haven't thought about it enough.

Re: How complete is your robot
 

and even if it is done, most people won't post it on. Most of the pics of nearly completed robots won't appears until 1 or 2 weeks before ship

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

all we lack is finishing up// no we actually got our robot built but now were taking off weight and finishing the custome frame and spinner rims jk about the rims but we are further than ever at this point so we think well get in alought of drive time. make sure you have a muffin fan on wour speed controllers for a cim they get a little hot running constant and if you have another flux capasator could you send it to us were running out

Re: How complete is your robot
 

I totally agree, how could anyone already have there whole robot built. To really design a good robot you need a few good weeks of brainstorming. We just started to build only at the beginning of this week, we have a lot done but still have more than a week of build left.

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

Frame is build and parts are on for mockup.. weve made a ball launcher, and are currently trying to get out autonomous and cmu cam to worlk together. We still havent build our ball picker-upper yet.

How far are you
 

So we are now about half way through the build season. How far is your team?

We are running really behind this year. We have a lower frame, alot of parts on order and a bunchload of CAD drawings. We are waiting for a bunch of parts which are being made out of house because we have very limited machine tools.
Hopefully next week we will have a completed drivetrain and launcher.

Re: How far are you
 

We could be further... it's been driven, but the major ball shooting components have yet to be completed. *shrug*

Re: How far are you
 

Like most teams, we're running a little behind, but it's no big deal yet. Ball shooter, drive train, ball storage, etc have all been designed and prototyped, and the students are now madly building it all. I suspect the final drivetrain will be done this weekend for testing and programming.

Is it Feb 21st yet?

Re: How far are you
 

we are still on the drawing board.

shaun

Re: How far are you
 

1293's making progress. The drivetrain is getting assembled, and should be able to be driven (if we throw on our practice bot electricals) by the end of business on Saturday. We could probably have gotten it by this point if we'd received our wheels and other materials before last Saturday, but such is the way of shipping. I'm not worried there.

The scoring team has pretty much nailed down the plan, and the CAD drawings are coming fast and furious. I'm not working with them too much, so I can't go into further details.

Re: How far are you
 

CAD, done. 2 speed drivetrain, done. Chassis, in welding, back on Sunday. Watercutting, done. Manipulator One fabrication, done. Manipulator two fabrication, 50% done. Robot, done next weekend.

(muahahaha)

Re: How far are you
 

As usual, Team 1294 asypmtotically approaches a finished robot.

Re: How far are you
 

Our robot is mobile and our launcher is functional; they just are not joined together yet. Our camera works and sometimes tracks the green light.

Team 1208

Re: How far are you
 

We started making actual parts just yesterday. This scares me, a lot.

Re: How far are you
 

Our team is .... well we have a lot to do still but progress has been made. Someone lost our order from skyway, had to reorder, have overnighted, that was Tuesday still haven't seen them. Have a lot of parts at the machine shop but I guess were doing OK based on others comments/stories.

Re: How far are you
 

We er... Well. We haven't really gotten very far. We are still debating on how to attach our treading, but it won't really matter until out sprockets (wheel and tranny) come in. The shooter design is done... sorta. The hopper and ball pickup is entirly up in the air. We have a couple of designs for each, but we're divided on which to chosse. So, in a nutshell, we're having a tough year since we have maybe five kids working on the robot and a couple of mentors.

Re: How far are you
 

Drivetrain...complete
Programming...90% complete
Rest of robot...top secret :D

Re: How far are you
 

Our design an dprototyping is done and majority of the parts are being sent to the fabricator and welder. Since we cant do much machining we are having it done for us. We can shoot make it up the ramp and have picked up balls with our prototypes. Hopefully we will get parts tonight and assemble the majority of the drivetrain and out lower construction so our programmers can have fun while we work on the ball collector hopper and shooter. Also we are working on building are cart (well actually fixing and modifing), and our control panel operators controls. My prediction is end of the fourth week at most 5th week. Then practice everyday for the remainderr of ther build season.

Re: How far are you
 

To put this in perspective...

At this time in 2004, my team was sitting around in a computer room, tossing around ideas, after physics of the frictiony ball surfaces made our original one impossible. I think this was also the week where the frame was started in construction, and CADing began.

At this time in 2005, we had a prototype claw, later abandoned for a more effiencent one, a CADed arm which was built and changed drastically in the 72 hours leading to the arrival of the FedEx guy*, and we knew what our drivetrain would look like. Our code master was hard a work trying to get the camera to work, and when he gave up, turned to encoders.

Right now, we have 5 prototypes in the shop, 3 of them fuctional, a sixth recently taken apart for testing purposes. We have the drivetrain to a T, V1 of the frame is constructed, and our electronics board is together. Our much larger than previous years coding team is hard a work, and after a rough start with the camera, is making progress in leaps and bounds. We know exactly what our shooter will look like, and have only one or two refined choices for other systems.

That doesn't mean much though, we're still behind schedule. :D

*Yes, there's a reason why I said 72 hours instead of 3 days. :eek:

Re: How far are you
 

My subgroup (ball gathering) is really far behind. We're having major inagration issues with the ball shooting team. :rolleyes: Other then that our team is doing pretty well.

Re: How far are you
 

In order of completion...

Drivetrain:
Gearboxes finishing tomorrow.
Frame finished tomorrow. (8020, bolts together!)
Wheels, pillow blocks, etc... finished tomorrow.
Hopefully a fully working drivetrain by end of the weekend.

Ball Pickup:
Prototyped and designed, going to manufacturing this weekend.
The full collection system should be done middle next week.
All parts in-house, or can be bought locally.

Ball Storage:
Prototyped and mostly designed.
All parts in-house, or can be bought locally.

Shooter:
The shooter itself was prototyped, and failed. :(
Going with another design while we'll further prototype, later.
The rest of the shooter mechanism is in design.
Much more to prototype before its final configuration.

Programming/Auto/Controls:
Err... This is ALWAYS our downfall.
Mostly, we know what we want to get feedback on, but how we're going to get that feedback is still in the air. In the meantime, we're dealing with resolution issues, and how design some of the mechanical system to work within that resolution. Most sensors in-house, or shall I say, in the KOP. Uhg...

BEN

Re: How far are you
 

robot, he he, what robot? today became stress day because we don't even have a working launcher yet.

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

Team 1676

20mm item extrusion chassis!

Re: How far are you
 

Welllll... We have a prototype shooter, a frame kindasorta(notreally) built, a design on the way (that will hopefully be finished by this weekend), plenty of idle hands... and a freshman with a broken finger.


Anyone want to trade freshmen?

Edit. A freshman with broken fingers. Plural, people. Gosh.

Re: How far are you
 

Well, 279 is about where it always is. We get the drivetrain portion of the robot done quicker than the rest and then add the game objective portion to it.

The drivetrain is coming along, I haven’t taken a look at it in a while but by the sounds of it, we should have a moving machine by tomorrow :D .

The Game Objective portion of the bot is halfway through the design process. The ball shooter is all designed finally! We are making parts for it tomorrow so expect another teaser. Also the ball collecting portion of the bot is coming along. We should have a final design after tomorrow’s meeting. We had some issues with how fast we wanted things to run, and then we decided that if we moved a ball 48 inches in 1sec that it would be too fast and unnecessary. But we seem to be ahead of where we usually are. Progress is progress :rolleyes: .

Electronics/Programming
Have no idea how far they are. They decided to use last year’s code for the cam and it works better I guess. But they don’t have a list of sensors of controls yet so I don’t think there is much they can do :ahh: .

CAD
Umm I didn’t know we had cad…. :eek:

Scouting/Spirit
Saving that for the two weeks between build and regionals. :]

I think that’s it. I truly feel that we are ahead of schedule for once! Besides, who needs driver practice anyways?

Re: How far are you
 

he he, uh Reds Robotics doesn't allow freashmen. :p you have to go through a year and half of eduction in electronics and robotics. Beginning Electronics(resitor, led's, and etc.), Advance Electronics (Demulitiplexer/mulitplexer, binary code, and etc.), and finally robotics(like the bobot but cheaper, make the chassis yourself and give the robot different behaviors according the currant lab give like make it follow the wall, or drive away from the edge, and solve maxes, stuff like that. :)

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

WE GOT OUR ROBOT TO MOVE!!! YAY!!!

unfortunately its first action was to proceed to run me over and try to flatten me.

3 weeks later and only the kitbot works???
i think we are in trouble.

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

306 Update 1-31-06: At the halfway point, we have a driving base and a completed ball pickup+assorted essentials. We have a shooter, turret, and hopper in the works for this coming week. Programmings going to need some time this year...

Anyone Done Yet?
 

So, is any team out there done with their robot yet?

Or is there any team that hasnt built anything yet? :eek:

Re: Anyone Done Yet?
 

If you haven't built anything yet you might as well pack it up and start planning for next year.

Re: Anyone Done Yet?
 

By the definition of the word I don't beleive our robot will be 'done' until reigonals are over. :D

Re: Anyone Done Yet?
 

Well, from what I hear, you're not finished until the robot is put back in the crate and shipped home. I've seen a few stories here of last minute tweaks done during competition...

As for being finished, our team is not entirely done. We have the mechanical part of the robot pretty much complete, and all we have to do is mount our electronics and wire everything up to see how it works. Of course after that there are those unexpected problems that you never anticipate, so we'll probably be spending a bit of time coming up with solutions for potential issues.

Then after that, the remainder time should be spent practicing and creating extra parts if needed (you never know when that important peice might break).

There really isn't an end here is there? It just keeps going and going and going...

Re: Anyone Done Yet?
 

237 has been finished since the end of week 3...

now could someone please explain this robotics thing you guys seem to be so crazy about to me?

Re: Anyone Done Yet?
 

My team isn't done yet. Is that really bad? :O

Re: Anyone Done Yet?
 

Not bad, by any means!
I think most teams aren't finished!
No worries, you still have a little bit of time left :D

1089 has a driveable base.
I'm under the impression we should be finished some time this weekend.

Re: Anyone Done Yet?
 

We aren't done. My guess is the robot won't be done until mid-next week, like usual. Poor planning usually is the result for this, but this year it's been partially do to leadership problems (we have 5 club officers; only 2 of the 5 that started this year still remain officers). Some too much work, some not really motivated, etc., etc.

We do have our whole design done though, and have all components at least started. The problem is putting them all together and giving us enough time to get the code working with the robot.

1978 hasn't built anything yet (Barry Goldwater High School from nearby here in Arizona). Their kit arrived 3 weeks late (last week Monday) due to registration problems, and was missing a few parts, plus they did not have enough funds to buy basically any additional parts for the robot. We've given them some materials to help, and it looks like they have a design reasonable to finish in the time they have. We'll help them as needed; I hope they get something built in time for competition.

Re: Anyone Done Yet?
 

We've had the worst luck with ordering parts...our frame peices were 6 days late, and 3 orders we made were never confirmed...we're behind from our set schedule, but on track with previous years. My only concern is that our design in more complex than we've ever done before...we might be working long hours on competition Thursday...

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

Were done. 4 weeks. kick $@#$@#$@# robot.

Re: Anyone Done Yet?
 

We got off to a rough start, changed our design quite a few times, communication issues. Finally looks like a Robot........OK, maybe not ;)

Re: Anyone Done Yet?
 

Team 1208 is definitely behind its projected schedule. As usual.
EOC

Re: Anyone Done Yet?
 

Our team is almost done with the chassis (I hope) but we are far from all the little things coming together. The shooter is in pieces as we just disassembled what we had done to paint the robot.

Our software guys mounted the camera on our robot from last year and have autonomous code running so that they can learn how it works (will later be adapted to our new bot - 2 wheel drive old bot, 4 wheel new).

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

Team 1011 is less than 2 days from shipping and we took the bot apart to paint. How is that for audacity...LOL! We have shooter, collector and dumper and only came in 8 pounds heavy at our first weigh-in. No kit bot for us. We used steel! We are rebuilding today, driving tomorrow and fine tuning programming issues and off to dryage Tuesday! Good luck all, and see you at Phoenix or Las Vegas!

Leslie Lintner
Mentor Team 1011

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

We're done!!!! :)

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

a robot?.........

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

Well...
We were going to be done by saturday, wired by sunday night, and driving monday and tuesday...

Then we checked our weight- at 9:00pm Saturday night we were projecting a weight that was 20+lbs over the limit. So, saturday night we started hemorraghing weight, and today we attempted to re-design...but everyone was exhausted and non-functional from the night before (loooong night). Right now we are starting from the base up (no pun intended)- we are maintaining our drivetrain and base, and our collection method. Tomorrow we will build a corner goal delivery method(goal #1), a BASIC shooter(goal #2), and various other things...(goal 3). Wiring will probably be designed in fix-it window and done on location @ Drexel...

Wish us luck!

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

Our team is now chillin'. We finished all major aspects during the weekend. The robot drives and shoots accuratley. So yea we happy. only thing we still need to do is rewrite some acceletation curves for the turret.

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

Well, we got a good amount done. up until this point the majority of what we've been doing is setting ourselves up for success. This includes improving organization and places to put tools and stuff to increase productivity. By the way, it has worked very very well, so anyone that doesn't have good organization, get some. It's amazing!
We've set up our driver station and our high school students all are given laptops by the school so we set up everyone who is even thinking about programming up with Labview and we have some pretty awesome ideas for our robot. We've already prototyped some kicking mechanisms and we have built a mock field to practice strategy.

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

Hawaii DOE has Furlough Fridays oh fun and that means that we dont get to enter campus on fridays it really delays us :mad:

Re: how far have you gotten on your robot?
 

Holy Thread Revival, Batman!

Closing ...