An update to bring you through 1/23

It's been a while since I last updated but thats not to say things haven't been going on. We have been busy.

The Minibot is really coming along. We are on our 4th revision of our original prototype. I've worked with various mechanical sub-teams over the years but I haven't seen a sub-team go through the design process as efficiently as this group has. Our best time, with our 100% legal minibot was around 3.5 seconds. There are still a lot of inefficiencies in our prototype and weight that will bring our time down once we make our final build. Also the design lends itself to a very simple and reliable deployment. We have one student who is a senior and it's his first year on the team and he came up with a great idea for deployment that I think will be quick and it will be easy on the drivers. I wish sometimes you could redshirt students. It was the first idea that really got me giddy with excitement. I love ideas that just make you smile.

Our manipulator group is coming along. They have got 2 designs that they are moving forward with. One is "active" and one isn't but both have their pro's and con's. it will be interesting to see which design finally wins out and make the competition robot.

The arm has been done in concept for a week or so, just waiting on parts and it will assembled onto our completed frame which has also been done for a little over a week. Those SuperShifters are awesome. Can't wait to see what they can do for us at competition.

I've noticed this blog has been very mechanical sided so I figured I give some insight into some other things that are going on.

Our marketing team is working hard on our 2011 Chairman's award presentation. From what I've seen it's really going to be awesome. We have some new blood in there this season and it's really showing. I don't want to say we're throwing out the old playbook completely but we are making some changes and it has the team really excited. I'll give some more details when I think it's appropriate.

I witnessed that group cutting up some Styrofoam Triangles Circles and Squares, I think you might see them in the stands this year.

I hope you all are enjoying your Logomotion build season.

-Justin

Saturday Meeting 1/15

Saturday's meeting was an important one for us. In my 7 years involved with 340 I don't remember so much progress so early in the build season. Part of it might have to do with our experience from the 2007 game but things are progressing nicely.

The minibot group spent the day much like I assume JVN spends a typical day at IFI, playing with VEX. We got our prototype to climb the pole in 5.9 seconds which was well below our goal for the meeting of building anything close to legal that could climb the pole in ten seconds. Even though there were some illegal parts, (VEX Motors ETC) we are happy with the results and are really excited to have the next 5 weeks or so to tweak and perfect our designs so we can have a fast and reliable minibot. We think we have our "alignment" mechanism down and have some good ideas for minibot delivery.

The "lift" group had a good meeting with a really solid prototype that was built that I could easily see influencing the design that ends up on the robot. That gets me excited because the sooner we figure out the final mechanisms the more time for programmers and driver practice.

The "acquisition" group again played a lot with the tubes and some interesting prototypes were made. Lots of wooden grabbers wreaked some havoc on our red triangle, but nothing duct tape wouldn't fix.

The drivetrain is coming along nicely. Frame members were being cut to length and that welder should be fired up in no time.

Lunch was a delicious combination of hommade and delivery Pizza, with such a large team this year there were no leftovers for the late group to munch on so we wrapped up around 8. 12 hour days this early in the build season are fun, but 4 weeks from now hopefully we still have the gas to turn out a beautiful robot. Maybe next Saturday I'll make sure we're done at 5....

37 Days to ship!

-Justin

Moving right along

Thursday's meeting was a "get everyone on the same page" type meeting. When we left on Monday night everyone felt that we had a solid direction and everyone was excited, so we started our Thursday meeting making sure everyone understood our direction and everyone was on board.

We split into sub-teams for the first time. 2 main sub-teams formed; tube scoring and minibot, within those groups tube scoring will be responsible for tube acquisition and lift whereas the minibot subteam wiill be responsible for minibot alignment, delivery and construction of the minibot itself.

I spent most of the evening with the minibot group which I plan to work with all season. It's something new for FRC and i'm excited to see all of the new designs and mechanisms that people use for all aspects of the minibot. I think on Thursday we just scratched the surface of what we will need to develop in order to have a successful minibot.

The tube scoring group played with the game pieces in front of the scoring pegs to get an idea on how each game piece prefers to be scored, what orientation it's easiest to pick up and tried to discover any commonalities among the game pieces that might allow one mechanism to securely acquire and hold each game piece. We also spent a significant amount of time looking at several arms/grabbers from 2007 and also from 2005 for inspiration.

Saturday is our first long day since kickoff and we hope to get working on drive assembly and really delve into prototypes.

39 Days to Ship!

-Justin

Day 2... The Strategies come out, then get eliminated

Monday night was productive. We outlined several possible robot strategies that we think will allow us to be successful at competition. At first, we went with quantity, not quality, then after we had our list, we knocked off each strategy that we felt was not going to allow us to be where we wanted to be and that's in the finals.

Sure each strategy may have had it's merit, but when it comes down to it, you can't play offense and defense at the same time. (right?) You have to do something well and we decided that something is going to be offense. We have looked at what we have been good at in the past, and that helped narrow down our strategy, because known technology or something you have done in the past is always easier then starting from scratch.

At the end of day 2 we have...

- A greatly narrowed list of strategies

- A basic drive concept (Flat field, not much needs to be invented here)

Hopefully after some strategy finalizing Thursday night, Saturday can consist of Drivetrain fabrication, scoring mechanism prototyping and after some clarification from FIRST, minibot/delivery prototyping.

I hope all teams are enjoying build season so far.

- Justin

PS- Follow me on Twitter for some "live" updates during meetings and maybe some spy pics @jmontois340

And so it Begins

The team was very excited after kickoff and was anxious to delve into the new game. One of our mentors stayed back from our local kickoff to print game manuals so we had them when we arrived. We spent an hour or so over lunch carefully reviewing the game manual so all team members understood what was expected as far as playing the game. We then spent an hour or so compiling our preliminary list of strategies that we think would allow us to be successful at competition. Then we dismissed to allow team members to go home, rest and further develop their strategies. Our next meeting will consist of a review of all strategies, narrowing the list and building a consensus on what the best strategy is for our team. Stay tuned to this space for further updates on our 2011 season.

- Justin

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