Team Updates

    This week in robotics, the electronics and programming team made programs for the kicking, hanging, and drive team. The Kicker team finalized the drawings and also made the final parts for the kicker. They also designed rollers to dribble the ball and added extra support to make it stronger. The hanger team got their arm fully assembled. The hanger team also mounted it to the robot. Many design flaws with the arm were also worked out. The chassis team put together the chassis with most components such as the kicker, the hanging mechanism, and some electronic parts. They also fixed some of the design flaws with the wheels. The scouting team finalized the pit and match scouting sheets. They also design the individual award buttons. T-shirt designs were explored and a concept of our design to graphic communications. They came up with many designs for us to consider. The scouting team also sent the scouting programs they developed to Team 247 of Berkley, Michigan, to have some programming issues solved. The team expects word from them within the week. One of students volunteered to beta test scouting software from Team 1657 of Israel. The spirit team came up with cheers and songs. The animation team worked on the Visualization video and is close to finishing.

    The flurry of prototyping and design work has come together to form a competitive robot! We have proven the ability to kick a ball over 30 feet, and the capacity to lift over 150 pounds! Our concepts have molded into concrete designs. The programming and electronics teams have put together and successfully demonstrated a breadboard control system and with it - we have every sub-system of the robot independently tested! Week 4 will see the team finishing up the final drawings and assembling completed parts. We are on schedule!

    This week, many of our sub-teams began constructing their prototypes. The hanger team has come up with a telescopic arm, raised by a pulley system. The arm consists of three separate stages. They will begin their prototype soon. The kicker team constructed and tested their prototype. It is still undergoing testing and tweaking. They went from moving the kicker with surgical tubing to using a piston. The chassis team is progressing through the design phase. They are sending drawings over to the machine shop to be manufactured. Programming updated all of their software to the latest specs. They created a basic view of the robot and had it communicate with the joystick. We have made a lot of progress over the past few weeks, and are continuing to progress into week three.

    The first week of the 2010 FIRST Robotics season for the Shifters has been greatly productive. A day after the kick-off, we met as a group for the first time with students, parents, and mentors. After familiarizing ourselves with the purpose of the game, we split off into teams to figure out possible ideas for our robot and how we want to play the game. After our meetings throughout the week, we have come up with detailed designs for a unique robot. We have decided that we would like our robot to go over the bumps rather than having a compact robot that will fit under the tunnel. The team has also decided that we want the robot to hang from the bar and allow other robots to be able to hang from us. From these determinations, we have established a hanger team, electronics team, chassis team, and kicking team. Our hanger team is still in its early stages of the design and currently has students designing parts on Autodesk Inventor in hopes of putting together a prototype soon. The electronics team is currently putting together some wire boarding to work with the programmers that will be working to program the robot upon completion. On the chassis team, the students have been engineering a chassis that will be able to handle going over the bump and came up with a unique design. We will have a 6-wheel design that will work well with the bumps. The kicker team has been working hard to design and build a working prototype for the kicker that will kick the soccer balls over both humps and into the goal. They have built a working prototype and are currently compiling data and tweaking the prototype as needed. We have also started to set up a team that will work to broadcast our events which will be the Boston and Connecticut Regional. The team is also putting together t-shirt designs and looking to update the team's website. Come back next week for our week 2 blog update from Team 61. Go Shifters!