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Unread 04-12-2002, 10:57
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dlavery dlavery is offline
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I actually think the EduRobotics kit is pretty good, and very useful for a lot of pre-competition season activities. But you have to have realistic expectations of what you can do with the kit, and the purposes for which it was intended. Equally important, to have a good experience with it you will need to understand how it was intended to be used, and how how the parts were designed to be used.

Quote:
Square axles in a square hole don't work too well
That is why all the kits include bearing plates. All those little bars with 5 holes that line up perfectly with the square holes on the long structural beams. The ones that provide nice, centered, round holes to support the axles and prevent binding. The ones that are very carefully described in the EduRobotics Mechanical Handbook. In other words, RTFM!!!**

Quote:
You have to cut pieces to fit, leaving you with a mess of parts useless to do something entirely different.
This gets right to the issue of understanding the philosophy that was used to create the kit. Tony Norman provided the key to this when he previewed the kit at the 2002 kick-off. As he described the structural components that would be provided with the kits, he said (paraphrased) "when the teams build their real robots, they have to work from raw stock materials - beams, sheet goods, and rods. The kit is designed to help introduce those ideas. It will include beams, sheet goods, and bar stock. From those raw materials, you can use the same basic techniques for fabrication that you will need to understand when building the competition robots (e.g. cutting, bending, forming, joining, drilling, etc.)." The kits were not intended to be infinitely reusable replacements for Erector sets. You are expected to machine your raw materials into unique shapes that are used to demonstrate a particular design concept or idea. Just like the real robot competition, you have a finite supply of materials initially available. If you use up all your raw materials, you can go and buy more (see the EduRobotics mechanical parts web page).

It is particularly important to understand that the EduRobotics kits are not intended to be a shake-the-box, be-all/end-all solution for prototyping robots. You should not expect that everything you will need for your prototype design will be supplied in the kit. You won't get all the parts you need for your FIRST competition robot in the FIRST kit of parts, and you probably won't get all the parts you want for your prototype in this kit either.

Instead, you should look at the kit as a starting point, from which you can (and should) extend and expand upon. If you don't have the exact structural member you need in the assorted metal shapes, then fabricate your own from wood and add it to the system. Don't have the an optical sensor you want in the kit? Get one from Radio Shack for $0.99 and figure out how to interface it to the robot controller! Go back and take a look again at the intro video - note that during the workshop at the kick-off last year, the participants didn't limit themselves to just the kit parts. The basic structures are built from kit components (the beams, sheet goods, and rods), but there are also a lot of "custom additions" made out of styrofoam, paper, cardboard, and tape. And all those mini-teams were able to put together a working system in only four hours.

Alan - you have exactly the right thought in mind when you said you wanted to challenge your students with interfacing the EduRobot motors with Lego and K'nex parts. Learning how to expand on the kits should be a part of the prototyping process! If we view the kits as a too-limited set of resources, then maybe we need to look at the situation from a different viewpoint. We should look at them as sets of raw materials that provide quick solutions to a lot of the basic infrastrucure needs (control system, motors, wheels, etc.), upon which we are encouraged to hang custom solutions. So get creative!

Quote:
Btw, can we dispense with the big honking joysticks and use a gaming pad instead?
Just wait a while...

-dave

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** RTFM (Read The Frick'n Manual)
 


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