FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)

[Vince]

A third book on FIRST robot design is in the planning stages, with the goal of a January 2014 publication. The focus of this book will be to highlight advanced manufacturing techniques that have been implemented on FRC robots in the 2013 season, with potential chapters on design techniques and methods (such as CAD and simulation), modern manufacturing (including CNC machining and 3-D printing), and control methods (including the innovative use of sensors and programming). Each chapter will begin with an overview of the state of the art in that industry, with the rest of the chapter devoted to case studies of these applications on individual teams.

As noted, we are in the planning stages of this project with the details for submitting material for review to be developed over the next few weeks. Stephanie Slezycki and I – who wrote two previous books on FIRST robot design – are again working together on this project and the intended format will be similar to the prior books.

While the opportunity to submit material for possible inclusion in the book will be available to all teams, both Stephanie and I will be at the Championships to talk to industry leaders (for profiling in the chapter introductions) and to visit with teams that have innovative applications that may be worthy of publication.

If you are on a team that has successfully implemented such techniques on your robot, we want to hear from you. If you are at Championship, we would like to meet you and see your work. Using this post, please let us know your team number and division, and how your team has used advanced manufacturing principles in your robot this year. Pictures welcome! This first call is simply meant for us to confirm that enough potential content exists. We will issue a detailed set of instructions at a later time that provides additional information on the project and submission process.

We look forward to meeting as many of you that we can this week, and we look forward to learning about the many innovations that teams have created for their 2013 FIRST robots.

Cheers – Stephanie and Vince

[Akash Rastogi]

Hi Dr.Wilczynski,

Really excited that a new issue is in the works. I was just wondering, however, why the 2nd book is priced far more than the 1st book. (Other than paperback versus hardcover)

http://www.amazon.com/Vince-Wilczyns..._athr_dp_pel_1

Can't wait for the new book!

Thank you,
Akash Rastogi

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Hi Dr.Wilczynski,

Really excited that a new issue is in the works. I was just wondering, however, why the 2nd book is priced far more than the 1st book. (Other than paperback versus hardcover)

http://www.amazon.com/Vince-Wilczyns..._athr_dp_pel_1

Can't wait for the new book!

Thank you,
Akash Rastogi

because the book is not new. They sold out some time ago. The price is probably from a third party trying to make a large profit on hard to get books.

[Libby K]

So excited to have the books coming back! They're so great.

[DampRobot]

If we're interested, should we PM you or respond in this thread?

[Vince]

Responding to this thread works!

If at Champs, be sure to list team number and your division (to make it easy for us).

Thanks!

[Coach Norm]

FRC 2468 Team Appreciate is in Archimedes this year.

We utilized a 3d Printer for about 20 parts on the robot. The one item that is most interesting is the string potentiometer we printed the parts for and made. This item provides us feedback on the deck angle of our shooter so we can shoot from anywhere on the field. We have gone thru 4 or 5 iterations of the final design. An equivalent item would cost in the range of $150 - $400 and we produced for considerably less than that. BTW, we received our 3D printer during week 4 of the build season.

LED lights on the robot that responsive to the sounds in the stadium. They flash and turn colors with the beat of the music. The LED panels were custom made and utilized a feature of the CRio that is not used by many.


Our shooter is made of HDPE deck with a custom made HDPE wheel and HDPE hopper/Jason' Deli Pickle bucket and rail system. All custom made on a CNC flatbed machine after prototypes we made. Shooter has vision control and PID to assist in shot selection, robot alignment and control. The shooter is mounted on a sheet-metal frame that was designed in SolidWorks and sent out be waterjet cut and bent for the robot.

Please come by our pit in Archimedes for more information, visual inspection and demonstration of the above items.

Norman

[Jaxom]

Originally Posted by Coach Norm

LED lights on the robot that responsive to the sounds in the stadium. They flash and turn colors with the beat of the music. The LED panels were custom made and utilized a feature of the CRio that is not used by many.

Could you share which CRio feature this is?

[s_forbes]

We used a manual mill and manual lathe to build most of the parts of our robot, as well as a water-jetting sponsor for important yet obscure parts (transmission plates/brackets, funny shaped gears). Lots and lots of iterative CAD modeling and packaging went into the design of our climbing mechanism, but that is a process that is not easy to document!

[Turtleinator]

Team 1816 The Green Machine in Curie has cool stuff for you to see!

Our robot this year utilizes, and won the rockwell automation inovation in control award for:
-3D printed "augers" (helixes) That hold and index frisbees when in a triangular pattern.
-Ornate water jetted baseplate for the frame of the shooter.
-Fully automated vision control system with point and shoot accuracy.
-Fully CAD-ed robot
-3D models with moving parts to show off the robot.

Come to our pit and any of our team members can give you more detailed information, or ask for Kevin. You can also look at our website www.edinarobotics.com for a picture of the robot.

[friskywombat]

Originally Posted by Jaxom

Could you share which CRio feature this is?

We use the DI/O ports of the sidecar, one each for red, green, and blue, and a custom circuit for the LEDs.

[Coach Norm]

Originally Posted by Jaxom

Could you share which CRio feature this is?

Here is the response from my programming mentor Joe H:


The implementation in San Antonio (Alamo) was using the cRIO's FPGA and RT processor to implement the Bling.

The FPGA was responsible for reading back buffers of timed audio data
using DMA from the analog input channel that had a microphone
connected.

The RT processor then performed DSP on the audio to identify the power of the Bass portion of the signal (128 Hz - 32 Hz). It also used some sinusoids to slowly sweep between target colors.

Once the color was chosen for that time, the FPGA was told to change
the 3 (red, green, and blue) DIO PWM signals that were driving the 3
channels of the LED panels. The FPGA continues to generate this duty
cycle until the next color is chosen by RT.

The digital outputs have FET buffers on them to allow the PWM signal
to control the relatively high current LEDs.

Hope this helps,
-Joe

[wilsonmw04]

FIRST Team 1086: Blue Cheese would love to show you what our students have designed and built this year. You can find us in the Galileo Division.


A quick list of features:

-- Light weight "Legendairy" octocanum drive train. This earned us the Engineering Excellence Award at the Chesapeake Regional.

-- Innovative use of a double rocker arm four bar linkage.

-- Lightweight and durable sheet metal frame cut on water jet and powder coated.

-- Full student designed and created CAD model.

A quick animation that points out a few of the features.

[Mr V]

2046 Galileo

In house

CNC milling

3D printed parts (though not as many as intially planned to to design changes)

Done by a student at his employer/our sponsor

Water jetted polycarbonate

CNC milling

CNC lathe

We also have a laser cutter but no robot parts were made with it this year though we did use it to make buttons.

I'll second the sentiment that you must check out 1899's laser cut plywood robot, it's a thing of beauty.

[Siri]

Current list, for reference:

Archimedes
20......manufacturing (waterjet, CNC & manual lathe, bridgeport, welding, broaching)
78......manufacturing (3D print, waterjet, CNC mill)
1902
2468....manufacturing (HDPE shooter) control (sound-responsive LEDs)
3310....manufacturing (CNC lathe, laser cut, CNC bender, CNC mill, TIG weld) and control (cRio-driven LEDs via Java, PIDs, limit switches & IR sensors)

Curie
359
1816....manufacturing (waterjet, 3D models with moving parts) and control (automated aiming)
2168

Galileo
222.....manufacturing (3D print)
125
842.....manufacturing (3D print, waterjet)
1086....manufacturing (octocanum, four bar, water jet & powder coat sheet metal)
2175....manufacturing (3D print, manual mill & lathe, laser cut, waterjet, CNC plasma cutter)

Newton
1640....manufacturing (polyurethane mold, laser cut, CNC & manual mill, manual lathe, MIG weld) and control (swerve code, prox sensors & limit switches, vision processing, driveable swerve display)
1741....control (shooter angle)
1899....manufacturing (plywood frame)

Not Attending
100?
696

Looks like I need to schedule myself more time off to look around!