DEWBOT VII

From DEW Robotics
Revision as of 18:22, 21 January 2011 by Jcbc (talk | contribs) (Added picture of autonomous mode scenarios paper)

Jump to: navigation, search
Douglas picks up a ringer using prototype claw
The text originally populating this page has been moved to the associated discussion (talk) page.

The team set two very aggressive goals for 2011:

  1. Win 1 Regional Event
  2. Attend Championship event in St. Louis 27-30 April, 2011.

DEWBOT VII will be designed to meet the specific challenges posed by FRC's 2011 game: Logomotion.

DEWBOT VII Build

Build season is the heart of the FRC year. It is the 45 days during which the team's students and mentors put their hearts, minds and hands into designing and building a great robot. Paradoxically, the time seems both far too short and much too long.

Starting with a cold January 8th morning and ending up in the middle of an even colder February night. The chronicles of the DEWBOT VII Build season make interesting reading of how we all band together to perform an almost impossible task of designing, building and testing a robot in such a short time frame. Associated with each weeks build are pictures showing happy (and towards the end, tired) roboteers and mentors hard at work.

Design Details

Drive Train

January 10th 2011: The big debate of the night The Drive Train. Pivot vs. Tank (6W)
Probably one of the most important decision to make for the robot. There were many pros and cons for both sides. Do you continue with the drive train you used last year, with the increased knowledge on how to build, program and drive it, and the added agility that come with but lose the 8 motors it takes and the amount of processor resources it will eat up?

Or...

Do you go with a simpler design, with can be created quickly, anyone can drive, uses less motors and processor, and can leave more time for working other aspects of the robot. However with this, sacrifice the maneuverability of the other option. While everyones input was listened to, the two main groups that needed to answer this were our drivers and our programmers.

The winner: Pivot, Our programmers and drivers were confident in their skills it may seem as a higher risk but will definitely yield a higher reward. We decided to go with what was our most valuable asset last year, agility. We were the fastest most agile Bot out there. This season is certainly shaping up to be a challenging one indeed.

Mechanical Scoring

Scoring is defined in the 2011 Game Manual. We made an Excel interface that calculates the autonomous, teleoperated, and minibot race scores to help us determine strategy.

Programming

Preliminary analysis of autonomous mode scenarios:

DEWbotVII autonomous scenarios.JPG

Electrical

Drive / Tactical

Strategy/Scouting

Events

Baltimore Area Alliance FRC Workshop

6-November-2010. Very helpful and educational. Our thanks to the BAA for their gracious invitation. (6) attended from 1640.

Move into Downingtown Robotics Center

In November, Downingtown Area Robotics moved from the Micken Building into a 17 K ft2 warehouse at 320 Boot Road, Downingtown. This is a great space for robotics, allowing a full-scale practice field. Alas, no sense of permanence. Our 6th home (and by-far very best to-date).

Practice Kick-off

Team 1640 conducted a Practice Kick-off on 11 & 12-December 2010 in preparation of the real deal. A formal Design Process was introduced
CPR Training
and tested during this exercise. 2006 Aim High game rules were employed for the robot basis, with the exception of the control system, which utilized 2010 standards.
Game simulation using students as robots proved very effective and provided very good insights into the game play and requirements for winning matches.
As always, the most difficult part of strategic decision making was in deciding which options not to pursue. Need to work on this.

CPR Training

Nine students, mentors and parents from Team 1640 received CPR training and 2-year ASHI certification on 18-Dec at the Uwchlan Ambulance Corps.

Outreach

Downingtown Robotics Center Open House

DAR hosted an Open House on the evening of 15-December.

Processes

Media

Sub-Teams

Design Team Page
Programming Team Page
DEWBOT VII Chairmans Award

People

Team Sab-BOT-age is what it is only due to the efforts of the people involved. DEWBOT VII's success will be in the hands of the students, mentors and parents engaged. The team's very existance is possible only through the gracious generosity of our sponsors.

DEWBOT VII Students
DEWBOT VII Mentors
Sponsors 2011

See our other robots at FRC Team 1640