Off-season project ideas?

[CyberWolf_22]

The Acoustic autonomous mode would be amazing.

Another way to possibly identify another robot would be to hack a radar speed gun (Hot Wheels makes one for like $30). The gun would detect when something moved passed the robot at a certain speed. Once you got the speed of the other robot you could even figure out how to intercept it before it scores.

[EllieJ]

Going to off season matches is a great way to spend the time. I guess its not really a project, but hey, its certainly worthwhile.
You still learn all sorts of stuff and get to test new things out.

[Beth Sweet]

What I'm hoping we can do this offseason is to follow in HOT's footsteps by creating a showbot. For those who haven't seen, HOT has a robot that they built for the sole purpose of taking it out into the community (who, like most people, think of robots as Rosie from the Jetsons). Their robot has a face that was molded from that of one of their teachers and it blows up balloons.

Personally, I'm hoping to make a showbot, however our showbot would do different things. A showbot is not only a great learning experience for the team, but also a great tool to get into the community!

[Sam N.]

Prove to leadership that a chassis constructed from stock materials (and maybe only a couple machined parts) is just as good as a chassis made completely by a CNC mill.

Prove to leadership that a chassis constructed from stock materials (and maybe only a couple of machined parts) is much faster to make than a chassis made completely by a CNC mill (considering our current team resources, and our current machine shop).

Prove to leadership that we don't need to wait 4 weeks in build season to get finely machined wheels when we can just buy them from IFI or AndyMark and recieve them in less than a week.

Prove to leadership that the legendary triple-jointed 254-inspired Kara arm does not mean a free ticket to nationals.

Prove to leadership that riveting tread onto wheels is 9.0 x 10^99 times better and easier than using 6-32s to fasten tread.

Prove to leadership that it is absolutely neccessary to consider all the logistics of gameplay before we start to design a robot.

Prove to leadership that if a Ph.D in mechanical engineering wishes to attend our design reviews, invite him, offer him coffee, a lemon square, comfy chair, maybe even listen to him.

Whoa that list is long, better get to work!

[Stvn]

Originally Posted by Sam N.

Prove to leadership that a chassis constructed from stock materials (and maybe only a couple machined parts) is just as good as a chassis made completely by a CNC mill.

Prove to leadership that a chassis constructed from stock materials (and maybe only a couple of machined parts) is much faster to make than a chassis made completely by a CNC mill (considering our current team resources, and our current machine shop).

Prove to leadership that we don't need to wait 4 weeks in build season to get finely machined wheels when we can just buy them from IFI or AndyMark and recieve them in less than a week.

Prove to leadership that the legendary triple-jointed 254-inspired Kara arm does not mean a free ticket to nationals.

Prove to leadership that riveting tread onto wheels is 9.0 x 10^99 times better and easier than using 6-32s to fasten tread.

Prove to leadership that it is absolutely neccessary to consider all the logistics of gameplay before we start to design a robot.

Prove to leadership that if a Ph.D in mechanical engineering wishes to attend our design reviews, invite him, offer him coffee, a lemon square, comfy chair, maybe even listen to him.

Whoa that list is long, better get to work!

Why not just become leadership?

[=Martin=Taylor=]

Originally Posted by Sam N.

Prove to leadership that a chassis constructed from stock materials (and maybe only a couple machined parts) is just as good as a chassis made completely by a CNC mill.

Prove to leadership that a chassis constructed from stock materials (and maybe only a couple of machined parts) is much faster to make than a chassis made completely by a CNC mill (considering our current team resources, and our current machine shop).

You’re pretty harsh on the TKO chassis...

That chassis has gotten your team far:
- It pushes
- It turns smoothly
- Its fast

What more could you want? And if its being done on a CNC mill then all you have to do is save the g-code - and reuse it next year...

[Guy Davidson]

Originally Posted by Hachiban VIII

What more could you want? And if its being done on a CNC mill then all you have to do is save the g-code - and reuse it next year...

I don't like this idea. I think that one of the things you shouldn't do is design anything major for a FIRST robot before knowing the challenge. If you do, you'd be much more inclined to use it, as it is already there, and you'll ignore the challenge. Some teams can do it, but it's a risk in my opinion.

-Guy Davidson

[Cory]

Originally Posted by sumadin

I don't like this idea. I think that one of the things you shouldn't do is design anything major for a FIRST robot before knowing the challenge. If you do, you'd be much more inclined to use it, as it is already there, and you'll ignore the challenge. Some teams can do it, but it's a risk in my opinion.

-Guy Davidson

But if you don't design things in the offseason and have them in your bag of tricks, it makes it way harder to build a functioning system during the 6 weeks, if you have to figure out all the problems with an idea as you go, instead of knowing exactly how to proceed.

[Guy Davidson]

Originally Posted by Cory

But if you don't design things in the offseason and have them in your bag of tricks, it makes it way harder to build a functioning system during the 6 weeks, if you have to figure out all the problems with an idea as you go, instead of knowing exactly how to proceed.

That makes sense. We were planning to do some work in the off-season anyway, we might make it FIRST scale and mess around with it. Hopefully it'll be more gain than pain in the end.

[Aren_Hill]

my team is going to be making improvements for IRI hopefully for a second win but the chances are a million to one with the competition (254 +968 you guys coming this year?)

but we also plan on some more programming related things with sensors and adjustments to make the robot more controllable.

[Dan Zollman]

Originally Posted by Stvn

Why not just become leadership?

I agree. You belong in leadership. (As long as you won't be as closed minded as your current leaders are in your current view...but you know what I mean.)

[Mike]

Originally Posted by Bongle

That's really all the materials he needs for a basic one. The coding portion will probably be difficult, but he shouldn't physically need anything more to make a low-speed reckoning system. All I meant is that he doesn't need a working robot or lots of space to test this basic one. But nobody cares about a programmer's pain, so to a non-programmer team-leader, that IS how easy it is. You drop it off, and come back a month later and hopefully he did it.

Just realized I totally forgot about wheel-turn counters. You can use them too (in fact, they're much better since they aren't measuring the 2nd derivative of your location). But you'd still only need a rolling robot chassis, not a powered robot or lots of space for that.

Yeah, thats all the materials he needs, but hes gonna need a co-processor if you plan on doing anything cpu intensive while also performing thousands of analog to digital conversions and interrupts. Then you need serial port code, you have to design a data packet, and fix hundreds of small nuances and bugs that you can't even begin to imagine. Also, a month? I'd estimate it at three, and thats working on it every single day for 5-6 hours. Try balancing 40 hour work weeks, plus high school, plus this. My partner and I are currently approaching the year-point-five mark.

Wheel counters are good when you are designing the system solely for your robot chassis, but when you want it to be easily accessible to hundreds of other possible variations you're going to want to go purely inertial. Then you can have fun accounting for drift.

All said and done a navigation system is one hell of a project, as well as a learning experience. I want to work on mine some more

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by Mike

Also, a month? I'd estimate it at three, and thats working on it every single day for 5-6 hours. Try balancing 40 hour work weeks, plus high school, plus this. My partner and I are currently approaching the year-point-five mark.

Wheel counters are good when you are designing the system solely for your robot chassis, but when you want it to be easily accessible to hundreds of other possible variations you're going to want to go purely inertial. Then you can have fun accounting for drift.

I suppose it all depends on the level of accuracy you're going for. We made a very simple one in a night (basically euler timestepping for approximation) that was accurate for about 5 seconds, which was all we wanted it for: Just to judge how far the robot had gone and if it got hit. One that accurately tells you where you are after long periods of jostling on inertia alone is pretty intense, that's way beyond what I was talking about. It's still a good project even if I underestimated the undertaking.