Team 1640 2011 Summer Program
The 2011 summer session is a little more eclectic than our past programs (in 2009 and 2010). Though our traditional spring off-seasons were canceled, we still attended IRI. We also lost our workspace in early May, leaving us homeless until August. Despite this though, we've managed to hold meetings at a few mentors' houses and the occasional restaurant.
Contents
Objectives
Our objectives this year are less closely associated than in past seasons. While we wanted to make this year our roller claw study (for real this time), but working in a living room, finished basement, and swimming pool makes this more difficult. As such, we took a rather different approach.
- Compete at IRI
- We squeaked in this year (OPR 60 of 66), but we're in! Unfortunately the lack of practice space and basically anything except our competition kit made it impossible to improve significantly. Autonomous couldn't be tested at all, and driver practice was limited to once in a nearby cul-de-sac. Driver training occurred at IRI itself--talk about starting with a challenge!
- Team Reorganization
- One of the less-obvious benefits of IRI is the very productive (and fun) drive there and back. This year, Clem McKown, Julie Christopher, and Siri Maley took the opportunity to draft a long-overdue and pushed-for reorganized team structure. Continued discussion and honing will hopefully ensure that the January 2012 team is a lot more student-run.
- Programming Training
- Julie Christopher graciously offered to hold open programming classes covering basic LabVIEW, robot code, and much more. These started on 12 July.
- Design Training
- Some of the biggest desires students commonly express in post-season interviews were getting more project ownership, hands-on decision making and design control. This all starts with confidence- and skill-building design training. Siri Maley kicked off this initiative on 3 August.
- Find a Home!
- This is the real priority for now. We have a temporary place until November, but without workspace for build season, the team's in a tough spot.
Meetings
Programming
12 July
In attendance: (Students) Ben R., DJ, Jeff, Kenneth, Michael; (Mentors) Julie Christopher, Siri Maley, Faith McKown, John Stumpo.
Ben R., with oversight help by Julie Christopher, taught the basics of LabVIEW to would-be programmers, including one new face. After learning the basics of the front panel, common block diagram data types, and simple selection structures, we walked through some of DEWBOT VII's code. This was great for both up-and-coming programmers as well as members concentrated in other disciplines.
9 August
In attendance: (Students) Alex, Ben B., Ben R., Nicole, Patrick, Sasha; (Mentors) Julie Christopher, Siri Maley, Clem & Faith McKown, Rita Wall.
We started with an introduction to programming, laying out some of the basics of programming, regardless of programming language. Resources: Presentation
After a brief break, we decided to talk about the Scrum agile development methodology. Resources: Scrum Wiki page and the version of the Wiki page used for the talk
11 August
Topic: Programming in LabVIEW
We applied some of the programming basics discussed at the last talk and most of the attendees programmed the simple vending machine state machine example from the last talk using LabVIEW. Those who did not program the vending machine spent their time learning some of the ins and outs of LabVIEW.
Resources: National Instruments' LabVIEW Tutorial on State Machines
In attendance: (Students) Andrew, Ben B., Ben R., Doug, Ian, Kenneth, Nicole, Sasha; (Mentors) Julie Christopher, Siri Maley, Rita Wall.
16 August
At the new location
Tentative topic: Exploring the FRC robot control framework, in LabVIEW and other programming languages
18 August
At the new location
Tentative topics: How to build a simulation model in order to test robot code; How to use scripting for a flexible autonomous strategy
23 August
Julie Christopher is no longer available on this date. If someone else is available to hold a programming talk, it will be noted here.
Design
3 August
In attendance: (Students) Patrick, Lucy, Ben B, Kenny, Jack, Sasha, Nicole, Andrew; (Mentors) Clem McKown (teacher), Ben Kellom, Rita Wall, John Weissman, Mike Rizzo, Siri Maley (teacher)
In the first half of this meeting, Siri Maley led a fast-paced design challenge to emphasize teamwork, design creativity & presentation, time use, requirement comprehension, attention to detail, and many other build season skills. Teams of 2-3 used drinking straws and tape to suspend up to 300 pennies over a 20" gap. Students presented their designs and thought process in initial and final design reviews, and participated in a post-mortem afterwards. The original term of "bridge" didn't apply to many of the products, but (because) the students definitely got very engaged and creative. Two new students enjoyed their exciting hands-on introduction, and the veterans got to practice some valuable skills and start learning more about design.
Clem McKown took the second half of the class, introducing the whole group to basic pneumatics (PowerPoint). He walked this team of (mostly) pneumatic-newbies through the physics, advantages, disadvantages and general uses of pneumatics in robotics. Then he, Ben Kellom and Siri Maley talked about Team 1640's recent pneumatic creativity and got a little hands-on: DEWBOT VII's speedy minibot deployment and claw as well as DEWBOT VI's kicker.
12 August
This meeting was at the McKown residence. In attendance: (students) Sasha, Nicole, Jack, Andrew & Ian and (mentors) Clem McKown, Mike Rizzo, Siri Maley, Faith McKown and John Weissman.
Clem opened the session with a discussion of the proposed new team organization. Sasha discussed drive-team try-outs. Afterwards, Siri guided the team through another build challenge with more concentration on design process integration. This time, groups got to build a Popsicle stick "tower" utilizing only super glue. The resulting towers were really short (think millimeters, not inches), but stong as the dickens. The impact test (A book on the thirty years war was selected due to its appropriate gravity) was the acid test.
17 August
It's robot time! Despite our austere facilities, we're up for more robot-centered work. We'll be doing hypothetical robot mechanism design with some rapid prototyping.