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Competition Awards
#1

Autodesk Awards Finalists Announced! Your Help is NEEDED

On April 4, the finalists for both Autodesk Awards were announced. Congratulations to teams 234, 341, 617 and 1764 for reaching the Autodesk Inventor Award final and teams 116, 135, 342, 867 and 868 for reaching the Autodesk Visualization Award finals. Congratulations also to all the other teams that participated in either of the awards for it is a truly remarkable achievement to submit an entry to this competition.
Because not many persons actually know about it. I will shortly describe the awards:
The Autodesk Inventor Design Award celebrates outstanding achievements of students in engineering, as well as mechanical design of the robot. In order to participate, the team has to create a model of the robot in the program Autodesk Inventor. In the ideal case, the complete robot is created and tested in Inventor before even the first screw is touched. Since the modeling of the robots can be quite complex, the participation in this award is remarkable. The award is just given out at the Championship in Atlanta and not at the regional competitions.

The Autodesk Visualization Award is celebrating outstanding achievements of students in animation and creation of video sequences to a gives theme. This year’s theme was to improve the life in your community. For the submission the program 3Ds Max is used to animate various components and many, many hours of work are in one of the 30 sec masterpieces. Unlike the Autodesk Inventor Award, this award is given out at the regional competitions as well.

The specialty
Here is what’s so special about both awards: Professionals of business and industry select five finalists for both awards out of all submissions. Those finalists appear on the website www.autodesk.com/firstbase . After the finalists are announced a peer voting is opened. This means that all FIRST student members can participate and vote for their favorite submission for the Autodesk Awards. This is very important and many persons should ideally vote for the submissions.
On the Firstbase website, the information for other teams that one was able to submit were very limited, therefore I would to use this thread to give all teams the chance to give the voters a little more insight about their video/robot and what makes their submission so special. I send a personal message to members of all teams in the finals!

Here is how you vote:

  1. Visit the website www.autodesk.com/firstbase
  2. Click on FIRST Robotics Competition
  3. Select “Register Now”
  4. Fill out the form. You’ll be asked for phone number and address
    but don’t worry if you don’t select to be updated on Autodesk
    products, they won’t bother you! It is, of course for free!
  5. Receive the registration email and follow the link
  6. On the upcoming window you have to select “Student member”! That
    is important in order to be able to vote!
  7. Type in the team password which is defined by the team’s main contact.
  8. After the registering is completed, log in and go to “My Team”
  9. On the right side you will find the “My things to do” list, go to
    the point “Vote for Your Favorite - Autodesk Design Competition
    <http://firstbasefrc.autodesk.com/?nd=vote>”
  10. Select the “Vote now for the Inventor/Visualization Design Competition”
  11. Go to the design submissions
  12. Chose the model you like best and click on “Vote for this team”
  13. Confirm your choice for the team and that’s it!
  14. Pass the word on to other FIRST student members!

Please practice Gracious Professionalism and vote for the submission, not the team, you like best.

#2

Sorry for the double post but this has a different content so I want to set it up a little.

As the starter I just go ahead and start with the description of our teams submission:

Autodesk Inventor Design Award
Team 1983 – The Skunkworks

Robot Description:
Our 2008 robot is called “das Überstinktier” (German for super skunk). It is basically a hurdler that relies on a ladder lift system. The ladder is a standard aluminum ladder that was cut into three parts for the robot. Run by two motors on the backside of the ladder, it guarantees a lifting time of about 5-8 seconds. Once we acquired the ball or if we don’t have a ball, our ladder with the attached claw tilts backwards. The slide system is works very well and keeps us from both losing the ball and getting penalties for our claw sticking into other robots! Innovative is our robot also because of the claw itself. The claw has several important design factors. Our two gripper are moved by an actuator/slide combination and is able to flex to the inside when hit by another robot. The talon on top of the ball guarantees a firm grip of the ball and lets us keep it in traffic. Finally the kicker or goose gives the ball a little push in order to hurdle over the overpass. For this claw we acquired the “Delphi’s Driving Tomorrow’s Technology Award” at the MSR.
As a drive train, we use a 4 wheel drive, traction wheels in front, omniwheels in the back. During hybrid mode we have shaft encoders to make sure that both wheels spin at the same rate all the time.

These adjustments enable us to acquire the ball quickly, hurdle and place effectively, in addition to drive controlled and without penalties and finally these abilities helped us to win the Microsoft Seattle Regional.

Model Description:
First of all, the model of our robot was more or less entirely created by me, Christoph Herold. As a German exchange student, I came to Aviation High School in September. I started to learn very basic skills in Autodesk Inventor through a class at school in October, I got interested in this kind of work. During my Christmas break I attended a workshop for FIRST robotics teams to learn a little more. Coming back from this workshop I got more serious about the Autodesk Inventor Award and started to “play” with Inventor.
But now about the model itself:
The beginning was made with the help of one of our mentors, Ken Zaballos. The exact measurements were used for the welding of our components and so on. This model was actually used to build our robot. The important mechanical parts were also designed in Inventor before we attached them, I made, for example, ladder hard stops to prevent running down etc. While our team was working on the execution of the design, I spent my time on making the model a little more realistic by adding wires and tubing, etc. All the wires and all the tubing are exactly the same as on the real robot and are put on with a big time effort. Unfortunately, I have to leave the FIRST robotics team I am on after this school year and I will probably have no chance to compete in this competition next year again! It is my rookie and also last year in it!
The fact that this robot is created by a rookie that know Inventor as a program just since October and learned everything from scratch makes this model something really special.

Renderings and real pictures
Here are the three view that represent our model best and a picture of the real robot as a comparison:

Robot


Claw

Due to the five image limit I cannot show those images here but the links should be valid.

[img=http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/9074/dsc0185sz3.th.jpg]
[img=http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/5923/team1983clawwithtalonkixr1.th.jpg]

Electronics Board


Overview/ You should vote for our model because…
[ul]
[li]created by a rookie (and non-native English speaker) knowing Inventor for just about six months!
[/li][li]it is a very detailed model!
[/li][li]it is made with love to the detail!
[/li][li]it came to a practical use!
[/li][li]It is the product of a very true collaboration between real engineers and students, where the students have learned valuable skills that they will be able to apply in the real world
[/li][li]no two wires or tubings (there are over … wires and …pieces of tubing) are interfering on the model (Check it out if you are the first to find two I will give you a little present!) :stuck_out_tongue:
[/li][li]about 150-200 hours of work were invested!
[/li][li]I would be really glad about it! :slight_smile:
[/li][/ul]

Again, please practice Gracious Professionalism and vote for the SUBMISSION, not the TEAM, you LIKE BEST.

I hope the members of the other design teams post a description like this in this thread as well for this is its intend.

Good luck for the competition and the tournament in Atlanta and may the best submission win!
Best wishes

Christoph Herold
Team 1983 – The Skunkworks
Autodesk Inventor Design Team

#3

Christoph
I just got to say that it turned out great! Hoping A lot of people see this and appreciated it for what it really is.

-Gee

#4