Tag: frc

First day of FRC robotics

Today is out first day of the robotics competition.  There is still a lot of work that needs to be done.For starters, the robots drive system needs to be rebuilt.  What happened when we shipped the robot was they were unable to find the right size gears.  Second the intake system needs to be taken apart and have is belts put on.  Finally the bbad needs to be installed (we just finished machining 2 days ago).
Once the mechanical team finished the electrical and programming team get to go to work.  The robot has not even begin to be weired.  Additionally programming team has written a bunch of code hopping that robot will work, but because the robot was “finished” only minutes before we bagged it there was no chance to test.
All in all, if the robot I’d working by the end of Thursday, it is going to require a miracle.

FRC world 2011

This coming weekend is the FRC 2011 world robotics competition.  After this, the 2011 FRC season will be over.  We are hoping to do decently well, as we feel that our robot can perform, but the question is going to be how it holds up against the other world-class robots.

While this will make the sad end of 2011 FRC, it will also mark the beginning of next cycle for our team when it comes to FRC robotics.  Next year we are already planning to get a lot more training in for everyone on the team.  It should be interesting to see everyone getting trained at all the various parts of the build season.  This should differ greatly from what we had this year with a few main people doing large chucks of the work.

I am hoping that next year will be able to be a lot of fun, as there are some thing that should be different from this year.  The first is being that we (as a team) are wishing to build more practice bots during the off-season.  Our goal is three different drive systems and then articulations to go along with said drive systems.  As the current programming leader, I would also like to see more people getting on the programming side of the robot.  I have big dreams with wanting to see a robot that could drive itself completely autonomously.  I am currently thinking that a xbox kinect could be used as the primary sensor for the system.  When in an indoor condition, the kinect is able to give distance data up to 27 meters away, which would be more than enough for decent robot control.  The kinect also packs a decent resolution camera into it.  The main problem with the kinect is that it is USB, and the cRIO has no interfaces for USB.  So my current plan is to use a pc104 like board with USB and ethernet to interface between the two devices.  This second processing unit could also serve as a video co processor on the robot possibly providing a lot more computational power.

First frc robotics competition of the year

This masks the end of the first frc robotics regional.  There are two sides to this update.  The first being that the robot is working a million times better than when we shipped it, but we still have a long way to go.
We only scored one of the rings on the pegs, this was for a few reasons, the first being that we did not have the arm working till later on Friday, the second was that many of our alliances wanted up to just play defense.
We also received a  big hit in the face when it came to the mini-bot.  We found that the bot was not as fast as we thought it was when compared to other mini bots, but we have a good idea of how to fix it, so it will become a competitive mini-bot by the next regional.

2011 FRC game

So this is the start of the 2011 FRC game.  We are about 4 days into the season right now, and if our team stays on schedule, which it seems that it will, then we should start CADing the robot today.

Being the programming leader of the team, my main responsibilities at this point is to start getting the systems ready, so that when the robot is built it can be quickly programmed, and to also start programming when we start to know the design of the robot.

Seeing that the first task of prepping the system should not end up taking that long, this should give me the chance to help with the mini bot.  Having been concerned for the building of the minibot, and the only leader figure without major responsibility at the present moment/Experience with FTC.  I should be able to start CADing the minibot soon with the rest of the team.  I think that the minibot is going to become less about making one design and being able to stick with it, but after initial CADs, being able to quickly go through design changes, to try and knock a few seconds off the climb and deploy time of the minibot.

In all I think that this is going to be a good season of FRC, the major problem is going to come down to if we are able to get the robot done with enough time so that we can practice driving it.  This is going to end up being a critical portion of our success, along with the time to test and “debug” the system.

FRC 2010 opening

Yesterday was the opening of the FRC 2010 robotics competition.  The game this year is center around socker for the main purpose of being easy for people that have not study the game (parents and and people that just want to watch) be able to follow it.

I think that one problem with this game is that the rule are a little to limiting and so that there is really one or two types of robots that are really going to work for this competition, and so ever team will have some variation of a theme.