Like A Boss

The title is a quote by Bryce about the gatherer prototype we built. For those who don't know, that quote means "it's awesome."

The beginning of today was spent taking our team picture for the yearbook. Luckily, a lot of the team was there to be in the picture. Most of today was spent doing more brainstorming while we finished the gatherer prototype. The gatherer will be able to pick balls up off the ground and bring them up to some kind of hopper which will then dispense them into our shooter. That's the idea any way... To finish the prototype, we drilled the rest of the holes so we could get the wooden dowels in. We also added a belt to make sure it all worked. There's a video of it up above. The video is also on our YouTube Channel which has a link at the top of this blog.

The brainstorming we were doing while working had a bunch of different tangents.

• How do we get our robot over the 4" bump in the middle of the field? Lots of ideas were thrown out: tank treads, some kind of ramp in front of wheels, bigger wheels, more wheels, hovercraft (just kidding).
• What kind of shooter to use? Spring catapult, pneumatic catapult, one wheel shooter. 
• What should the hopper look like? Vertical, ramp, do we need one.
• Do we need a gate in front of the gatherer? What should that look like?

While we didn't come up with many answers, just talking through the problems and throwing out ideas is an invaluable experience. Luckily, Bryce's brother-in-law, Jimmy was able to help us out today. Chandler, a student from Alex Tech, also came over to help. It is great to have their expertise available to the team.

Tyler started working on making the schematics for a trial bump and bridge to test our future robot on.

The PR team worked on getting the Echo Press article all set up. They also sent an email to the PMMC (one of our major sponsors, check our sponsors page!) thanking them again for their support and updating them on our progress. The big PR development is that we are going to get our t-shirts ordered. They are going to look so awesome!!! There is a big surprise for the shirts which is going to be amazing. The team is super pumped.

In general, the team is having a little bit of growing pains. There are more students than in the past which is a GREAT thing. It just makes getting organized and keeping everyone on task a little more difficult. Not impossible, just more difficult. This will come together though. Overall, yet another great day with lots of progress. We already have some good plans for tomorrow. We'll leave you with this picture of Bryce and Bydlon.

YouTube is Our Friend

Research

We went to the GO FIRST post kick-off event yesterday. During the presentation, they told us that the best way to design is five steps:

1. Make a requirement/objective list. We did this at the post kick-off. This is a list of what we need our robot to do and then what we want it to do. 
2. Do historical research. This is what we focused on today. 
3. Conceptualizing. This is what we will focus on tomorrow. Each team member will use the information we learned today and then create a design.
4. Critical Design Review. We take all the designs we created and then pick one or two that will like based on the R/O list we created at post kick-off.
5. Prototype. We build pieces of the final design(s) and make sure they work. 

Programming Team in Robot Room

This seems like a long process and it is. However, this part of the build season is probably more important than any other part. If we start building and some part of the robot just CANNOT work, then we are out a lot of time and effort. It is much better to focus on getting it right first, then building it.

So, like the title says, today was spent looking up previous games and robots that worked really well at those games on YouTube.

• 2001 had a speed bump sort of thing and a bridge so we looked at robots that could go over the bump and how robots got the bridge to come down. 
• 2006 had a shooting game but the hole was vertical and 30" as opposed to our 18" wide horizontal basketball hoops. Still some good shooter designs.
• 2009 had ball collection from the ground, storing of balls and then dispensing them. The big difference here is that we can only 3 balls, in 2009 there was no limit. 

While the electrical and mechanical teams were working on YouTube, the programming team started setting up the programming. Apparently, if we actually had a robot to drive, the programming is all done for driving. That's awesome.They also started setting up the Kinect to be our eyes on the field.

Colin says "Hi"

Last but not least, the PR team focused on the Kit of Parts. They got it all out, inventoried it and then organized it back in the robot room. They also did more research on getting a video camera for the team to use. That way we can also post more videos on YouTube and create a video blog as well.