Kickoff photos

I know I'm late with these, but I got a work order from Mosher to post some photos taken at the kickoff day.

To see all of them, go to this folder in my photobucket account.






If you want any others direct-linked on this post, let me know.

Master Prototyping Ideas thread

This post allows for a central comment section for ideas for robot prototypes.

Wednesday, Octobere 6, 2009

Got the old robot out of storage and reconfigured the brain to operate its existing motors properly. Hashed out ideas for dealing with the CO2 beach balls. Prototype constrictor gripper demonstrated. Next meeting, Thursday, 7:30 p.m.

Steven, signing off.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Brainstormed gripper ideas. Ben has a crab-claw-type gripper design he's drawn (no prototype yet).
-- If you have gripper ideas, please try to construct a prototype to help the team understand your idea! --
Using IGUS chain to create a boa constrictor-type device to retract around the beach ball is another idea.


Next meeting: inventory of consumable/returnable products. Brainstorm gripper ideas, create design matrix... consider the benefits of each design versus their flaws. Meeting Wed. Oct 7, 7:30 p.m.

Steven, signing off.

Thursday, Oct 1, 2009

Mosher: Hooked up large motors to an old chassis of a previous robot. Josh familiarized himself with the BEST BRAIN programming with Russ. Ted, Tex, and Nicole went over possible game strategies with Jim (Ted will update notebook later). Zach and Ben mounted large motors and connected them to the BRAIN. Next meeting, Monday 7:30.

T-SHIRT IDEAS WELCOME

Steven signing off.

Wednesday Meeting, Sept. 30, 2009

(Reminder, Public Library late fees start tomorrow! Just FYI)

More details from the guys who went to kickoff. Discussed the equations referenced in the game rules. The scoring system seems to be a base four, meaning four water is equivalent to one catalyst, four catalysts equals one energy, four energies equals one carbon dioxide, four CO2's = 1 ethylene, 4 ethylenes = 1 benzene, 4 benzenes = 1 naphtha, 4 naphthas = 1 isooctane (making one isooctane equal to 512 waters). Theory: 2 CO2 + 3 ethylene per round would give us 1040 points, a base goal to shoot for, according to Matthew.

Then everyone broke off into subgroups, motor testing, computer work, and general conversation. Not a terribly large amount we can do as yet.

UPDATE: The brain bench test download was successful, Blake's laptop works!

So that's about all you missed.
This is Mass Media, AKA Steven, signing off.

Meeting: Monday, Sept. 28, 2009

Introductions took place. Basic first meeting stuff. The basic game premise: Took an awful long time for them to explain it. Robot needs a good grip (able to grab a beach ball). Find something that can grip and place effectively. Mathematics a must here, adding the types of balls used. Have to be able to pick up tennis balls, cans of tomato paste, paint cans, etc. (I don't know, start coming to the freaking meetings, flakes.) Later I'll try to add the specs in the useful links section, so keep an eye out for that. Try checking out the BEST website for the specs.

Each team, as has been the case in previous years (last year anyway) , had their own separate quadrant in which to primarily work. The specifics are actually pretty hard to discuss on a text blog. Again, I recommend you try to make it to the next meeting. It would really help.

We'll try to focus on bench testing the BRAIN before we get to the nitty gritty. If you missed the meeting, it's a good idea to check out the official game rules. Make sure you do that, it'll get you up to speed by the next meeting. Pay particular attention to the section explaining the equations, and remember that 1) H2 spare molecules are wasted and cannot be reused (water acts as H2) and 2) the "promotion" aspect (4 of one type of molecule equals one of the next highest molecule).

Preliminary strategy includes that the robot might bring materials over to the off-load area, where the spotter may move the materials into the processing section. That seems the fastest strategy.
The largest problem seems to be putting the beach balls on the paint cans. Try to consider ways to significantly facilitate this process.

Delegations:
Matthew, Brandon, Ted, Nicole - Game Strategy
Josh - Programming
Steven - Communications [like this blog!]
German Tex - Gripper/Chassis/whatever else he decides he wants to work on
Zach - Game Floor

This seems like about everything worth discussing.

Steven (AKA Mass Media) signing off.

Try to make it to the Wednesday meeting!

New Information Leaked

Details are sketchy, but from looking at BEST's Q&A page, it seems one can infer some basics about the competition.

I skimmed the pages, and from what I can tell, our objective for the "High Octane" theme is to use our robot to assemble objects like beach balls, tennis balls, and other things into macro-sized chemical models (presumably to improve fuel efficiency).

One would imagine the robot as a nanobot capable of mechanically, physically moving and bonding molecules of water and carbon dioxide and combining them with an octane molecule. It's just all in blown-up scale.

Do your own research if you can, follow the above link (it is also in the links section to the right), and see if you can figure out something useful for us.

Steven Benson, signing off.

BEST Kickoff Day

BEST Robotics Kickoff Day is on September 26, 2009 at 6:00 a.m. Be at Shuler Education Center, located at 53rd and Wanamaker, at the designated time for departure. We may stop off at a McDonalds rest center along the way.

James Currier is planning to bring a video camera for the event, and we have the list of probable attendees.

Anyone who was unable to put their name on the list, please comment, or, if that doesn't work, email me at edgemaster025@gmail.com with "Robotics" somewhere in the subject line.

The Kickoff Day is a chance for the team to see the main objective of the BEST competition for the year, so you can get a jump on the brainstorming. Since the preview video was so helpful (and by that I mean not at all), this is definitely something worth attending, if you can.

Also, for those of you unable to subscribe using Blogger/Blogspot's system, the RSS feed link is down at the bottom of the page. Bookmark it if you like, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox I know both have RSS feed readers. Usually, opening the RSS gives you an option to subscribe to the feed.

In other news, I'll be trying to put up a box with key links, like the Student Contract, the BEST website, and so on.

For now, this is Steven the Update Guru, signing off.

Maiden Update August 26, 2009

Hey, all, this is Steven Benson, appointed update guru for the Washburn Rural Robotics Club. I'll be doing my best to manage the club blog, to get you in touch with what all we're doing. If you don't know me, I'm a senior at WRHS, and this is my third year with Robotics.

Since this is an unofficial post, there's not much else to say, but be on the lookout, subscribe to this blog, do whatever you can to keep up to date. I'll post news, upcoming landmarks, and so on. Last year we had a Wordpress blog, but that became an exercise in futility pretty fast. So this year we're trying Blogger! Let's hope and pray (in a non-denominational way of course) that this works better than last year!

We were considering Facebook and Twitter, but the former is blocked at WRHS and the latter doesn't allow much detail, so this is the best we can (as far as we know) manage.

This is Steven, signing off.