So, how is everyone doing in regards to progress?
2225 is on their 3rd year, and were doing much better then normal. We got a design down, and a prototype ball manipulator.
We also FINALLY came up with a name and slogan that we can keep.
Robots
Uniting
Students
Together
R.U.S.T
All the caffeine in the world can’t fix this problem.
We don’t have a design down, we haven’t started on a chassis, we just really got a practice driving bot rolling.
Things generally don’t start falling in place until about week 4 for us. :D.
Team 1522 is doing alright. We spent a good part of week 1 finding designs that won’t work on the robot this year, and chassis/mechanisms are being constructed in inventor now. We’re also setting up a practice field here in Ashland, Virginia with a few other teams.
Stay tuned for the name of our robot this year, as last year was Christopher Walken, we have to see if we can still mix things up a little bit for 2009.
We’re doing better than normal this year. Friday/Saturday (today) was very productive. We got two practice bots running (one IFI/New Wheels, another cRIO/Old wheels), thought up a few designs, boiled it down to one design, started training some of the freshmen.
We start manufacturing the superstructure sometime this week. Also planning on having the camera working and some basic robot code. Probably will work on the drivetrain here-and-there.
Overall, I think I’m personally satisfied with where we are right now…
We have our base chassis almost done. We finally got a non proxied computer to configure the router and gaming adapter and we have our design all planned out. We are on track compared to last year.
We’ve got a plan, but we’re hunting for more sponsorship before we make it happen. Expect big things; these students up in Spokane have got serious creativity.
That’s exciting, congratulations. I like your slogan a lot.
As for my team, I’m in the interesting position of being at college but still sort-of part of the team. I’m not involved in building the robot since I’m in another state, so I pretty much have no idea how that’s going. I’ve been having discussions on our team’s forums about strategy, awards, and robot design, and I would say that’s going pretty well, and we’re on-target to where we should be.
Our team has spent a good portion of the week building an almost official trailer for as cheap as possible (i.e. using pvc pipes 1/8" smaller that we have to save buying 20 feet of it, etc.) and searching for orbit balls (which we now have 12 of). Programming has gotten familiar with LabView and made one or two test programs to drive a test chassis with this year’s controller. The kit chassis is being bolted together but will have to wait for ordered parts to go much further.
Design has been hammered out surprisingly well, largely because we haven’t forced everyone to be in design discussions like we used to. The day of kickoff was a full team design/strategy session for 8 hours but after that we’ve had parallel groups refining design, prototyping ideas, constructing our trailer, and now manufacturing team buttons (you can never start too early on them!).
Our initial ball handling prototypes worked well for gathering balls but weren’t too effective as a scoring mechanism, with a quick upgrade however they’ve surpassed our expectations and may go on the final robot with almost no modification.
Summary of design so far: 6 wheel drive, long chassis configuration, loads balls via ground pickup or human players, shoots balls into goals. Will probably be using a gyro as usual for straight driving correction and going to try to use the camera (it worked in 06 and 07 for us, so if this one’s even easier I think we’ll have success). 2 years ago we tried omni-wheels for the first time and last year was our first wide chassis robot, this year will be our first *non-main-power motor drivetrain :ahh:
*For all the younger teams, going back pre-2005 there were drill motors in the kit and these were often the teams drive motors for their robots. The CIMs were around by the time I started in 2004 but I don’t know the first year with them.
Overall design concept is in Inventor, there are gaps in it that we need to get stuff built first to figure out. Prototyping shows that we can indeed pickup balls and shoot them out. Pointing them the right way is still in concept stage…but we do have a plan.
First attempt at the “final configuration” chassis is under way, wood parts are cut out and ready to be drilled and fit and assembled. Transmissions and wheels are assembled.
Programming team has grown to half a dozen, which is a welcome change from past years. They have an old robot driving around with the new control system, networking stuff is figured out, most of the sensors are working. Still have not done the color target recognition, but they do have an ultrasonic sensor reading pretty accurately.
We have one goal almost built, and a Payload Specialist really eager to get it done and get a bunch of hoop time in.
Donut–Interesting move using non CIMs for driving. You’ll have the software limit the amount of time that they get a huge amount of current if they’re not turning, right? as an added smoke retension measure 
We’re actually not too worried about frying motors at this point. From what we’ve calculated we should be able to gear our robot down to 8-10 fps (a reasonable speed that will be hard to exceed on this year’s field) and still have enough torque to slip our wheels from a single motor at only 1/3 to 1/2 power. Since we’ll be using two motors our safety margin is even larger, and we can use lower current breakers (like the 30 amps) to ensure we don’t draw too much. Right now we’re more concerned about how the gearboxes we plan on using will hold up, as we’re going to have to rely on only our team for spare parts with them.
1501 has got an actual replica of the game trailor done, a trailor of the same shape without the columns (to recreate weight and size), prototyping done, and 2 robots, all with the new wheels. One with a vex control system on the full size robot, and one with the cRio. We had gotten about 1/10 of the playing field done, and are now deciding on the final bot…a week ahead of where we were last year!
team 1089 is doing better than last year… we’ve decided on a design… and i think we’re ready to start prototyping. I don’t know if it’s finished, but we ar ein the process of building a trailer. Some members (including myself) are hard at work learnin labview, and others are working on inventor.
2429 is waaaaaaay ahead of where we were last year. We have a chassis built and gearboxes mounted (all we need to do to get it driving is add chains, brace it a bit more, and get our control system running). We also have most of our manipulator prototyped and we have a solid idea of what we want to do with our robot.
Considering that last year we weren’t this far along until about week 5…I’d say we’re doing pretty well.
The Programming Team for 1902 is moving along! We have completed bench testing and made several test programs to be sure that we can use every device necessary for this years robot. We recently mounted the new control system on a test bot and have now begun testing on the best way to write driver assistance code.
Random bugs still abound due to the new system, but I for one feel like we are getting significantly less of them at week 1 and are excited to keep programming for the next several weeks of our lives!Team 847 had some interesting debates immediately after kickoff because in lunacy, we’re suddenly faced with a game where nobody actually knows what will and won’t work. We have almost as many newbies as veterans on our team this year, which means that although they don’t have bad habits about things (like jumping to conclusions regarding design), they have yet to learn some of the good habits (such as knowing when we need to stop arguing details of design and just choose a bot to build), either.
We were a little bit behind schedule on deciding what kind of a bot to build because of all the unknowns, such as how many fps we could expect to drive and whether the robot would be able to steer. As of yesterday, though, we’re onto the second prototype of the manipulator and have the first prototype chassis completed, and Electrical is festooning SoftBot with sensors while the mechanical subteam attempts to retrofit it with rover wheels.
We also have a pretty clear timeline of everything that needs to get done before ship date, and even (in theory) time for driver training for once.
We’ve been able to to acquire a few orbit balls from local stores and with the help of friends in other states, and we’re trying to make replicas of them so there’ll be enough to use at scrimmage. A team parent built us a mockup of the goal, which is really helping with testing of all the prototype designs.
Good Luck!
Right now, team 1554 has part of the chassis done (all that’s left to do is to mount the wheels, gearboxes, and chains). We also have an idea of what we want to do, although we haven’t actually finalized design yet. This week I hope to finalize the design, gather any necessary building materials, and get some building underway. Also, I want to get some field elements built, such as a trailer and the vision target.
I think we’re off to a very good start, though.
this is my first yr on our team, but it seems to me that we are doing well…we have a prototype canon (which was really exciting!!), a practice chassis, and a start on programming and electrical (well…i’m not really sure what but i know they’ve been hard at work 
)
We’ve got a trailer almost done, need to get more wheels!
A lot of ideas, and our team leaders/mentors have gone through them all.
We’ve got the drive train decided on, though I’m having second thoughts because of the trailer hitch rule.
The scoring mechanism is still under a lot of debate. After trying to throw the balls into the trailer ourselves, and finding how easily they bounce out, we’re thinking a shooter may be somewhat impractical. A sort of dumper design would seem more likely to work. But it relys heavily on pinning another robot.
We need to reconfigure the kitbots to our drive train design. And our programmers need to finish their benchtests and get the stuff mounted to our kitbot.
Basically, we have a lot of work to do.