DEWBOT VI Indiana Robotics Invitational

16 and 17-July-2010 at Lawrence North High School in Indianapolis, IN. This is the first year we've been accepted into the Indiana Robotics Invitational (IRI)! IRI is the largest and most selective of all off-season competitions and is even larger than any FIRST Regional, with over 80 teams in attendance. Check out the event website.

Match Results

Match 7

1640, 48, and 1732 lost a very close and hard fought match to 45, 294, and 51. We could have been more helpful (the kicker was rather anemic), but it was a great showing against international champions 294!

Drive Team: Carly, Sasha, Andrew, Clem

Match 15

1640, 148, and 1114 beat 1714, 118, and 1718 15 to 11--talk about seeding points! (We ranked 7th at one point today, Friday.) An excellent match with an excellent alliance against another fine triad: this is what IRI is all about!

Drive Team: Carly, Sasha, Andrew, Clem

Match 32

1640, 359, and 573 cleaned up an a fantastic 10 to 5 match against 171, 141, and 1592. We did excellently in this match: a virtual shut-out (one ball scored on us) of not one but two robots in their home zone. This impressed people. Well done, drive team! Also, great adaption the kicker being jammed: on-the-spot change in defensive strategy from block & clear to just block--very effectively. We couldn't get over the bump with the kicker stuck, but easily cleared the tunnel.

Drive Team: Carly, Sasha, Andrew, Siri

Match 40

1640, 2826, and 1675 beat 1058, 135, and 1038 in a close 10 to 8. Again, we played excellent defense, often with 3 robot attempting to score on us, 1058 very reliably from the mid zone. Wonderful drive team coordination--we know what's going on on the field, and we know how to deal with it.

Drive Team: Carly, Sasha, Andrew, Siri

Match 57

We really are a tri-zone robot. We pretty much finished proving that is this match, when 1640, 2062, and 1625 shut down 1902, 1646, and 116 by 15 to 4. Now that's a score! A good deal (I lost track myself - Siri) of those were ours from the home zone. The kicker's still anemic, but that's ok from the home zone, and we're back to controlling it by and large. To round it off, some fantastic on-the-spot alliance communication allowed us to set a pick on our defender, pinning them (legally) against the wall so 1625 could score in our other goal.

Drive Team: Carly, Sasha, Andrew, Siri

Match 67

Well, you can't win 'em all--especially when you're playing against international champions Team 67. 1640, 503, and 1529 lost a bitter 2 to 12 against 67, 888, and 70. On the bright side, we scored all the alliance goals that match--all three. On the more aphotic side, we also scored the penalty. As impressive as our new possessor is, the Lo Bar has taken quite a beating--we managed to push it down so far that we ate a ball. Rough match all around--we flickered in and out of communication so quickly and repeatedly that the wheels appeared to return to Medieval Europe for St. Vitus' Dance. We've really got to fix the Classmate problem.

Drive Team: Carly, Sasha, Andrew, Siri

Problems Encountered

On the up side, there are 78 teams at this competition, which means we often have over an hour in between matches. On the rather less elevated side, we often have work to do in that time.

Losing Communication (Persistent)

This pretty much sucks. Though we've determined that we can connect the DS to the robot through the wireless in the pit, we sometimes (though thankfully not even more often) flicker the connection on and off on the competition field FMS. It's even worse on the practice field, when we have to tether. Part of this can be attributed to a loose Ethernet connection due to a bad port on the Classmate. We need to repair or replace that--sooner rather than later (though we'll have time enough after IRI). Secondary issue: we don't know what the diagnostic error messages mean. Ben to look up as full a list as possible Friday night.

Contact: Ben, Foster for technical. Carly, Sasha, Clem, Siri for observed instances.

Auto-Fire (Matches 7-15+?)

To everyone's continued bewilderment, the kicker fired on it's own in teleop (though ironically, not often in autonomous) for our first several matches. It's not in the code. It's not in the specs. It doesn't happen on the practice field. Fortunately, it's sometimes a pretty smart auto-fire, kicking only when Carly is in line with the goal. This is actually because she lines up slightly away from the ball and then inches forward--apparently almost exactly the correct distance. Unfortunately, the operative word is "almost". Even at its best it actually kicks just short of contact, making the arcs rather anemic. Oddly though, in Match 15(?), "almost" turned into "nowhere near". We're still not really sure what happened, but we seemed to regain control by at least Match 57. Be nice to know, though.

Contacts: Carly, Sasha, Clem, Siri, Ben. Paul also consulted with understandably little enlightenment.

Hackensack Death Grip

We worn down the standard consumables on the Hi/Lo Possessor, making our death grip rather less grippy (deathy?). We switch everything pretty easily, though the Grip-All rubber band didn't work out so well. We do have issues finding the correct replacement friction tape, but we should have enough to make it through.

Contacts: Clem, Siri, Doug, Matt, Sasha, Andrew.

Lo Bar Actuation

One on the cylinders on Lo Possessor Bar was bent. It took us a bit to discover, but we did replace it. The left stop also fell out once and over-loosened once more. We also managed to twist the upper rollers, which is probably what caused the Lo Bar to slip and make us eat a ball in Match 67. We added stops to the outsides of both rolling 80/20 struts. This seems to have improved things. Oddly, we also managed to completely rub down the friction tape on the bottom side of the Lo Bar. This is interesting, considering it's physically impossible for the bottom of the bar to hit flat ground before a significant portion of the 80/20 struts bottoms (like 3/16"-ish).

Solution: Tapped shaped top caps to hold the stops at the right height, and polycarbonate spacers to hold the rollers parallel and at the correct distance. In the future we should probably pay more attention to this. 80/20 is great for sliding things on, unfortunately, that makes it reasonably effective at letting things slide off.

Contacts: Clem, Siri, Doug, Matt.

Jammed Kicker (Match 32)

We could not get connection in the pit (this was before we learned the wireless trick) and thus had to start with only 80psig upstream pressure(the original minimum we were comfortable with). Unfortunately, that minimum was decided pre-Lo Possessor Bar. Come kicker relaxation, the much larger diameter kicker cocking cylinders start creeping back while the Lo Bar shoots up, and you have yourself a jam. Also unfortunately, we've removed the Lo Bar extend/retract override from our competition code (...but not our final specs). Solution: We'll fix that ASAP.

Contact: Sasha, Siri, Carly for observations. Ben for fix.

Kicker Bands

These came loose early in the day, but luckily that's easily fixable. They (namely the forth band) also proved abnormally difficult to replace Friday night. We managed though.

Contacts: Clem, Siri, Doug, Andrew, Matt, Sasha, Rita.

VEX at IRI

We were invited to come play Swept Away the classroom / TSA version of Clean Sweep at IRI. The rules are similar, but it's on a 8 x 8' field and there is a limit of the parts the robot can have.

Jack and Foster built a robot 2 weeks before the event, borrowing ideas from past robots (the shoulder and slide extension) and a football basket Foster had seen at the TSA National Championships. Jack then spent a few hours honing his drive skills before heading west.

The practice paid off. Representing Team 1640 (sab-BOT-age) Jack took the event with 11 wins 0 losses. "Chris is me" from FRC 2791 Shaker Robotics took second place.

Jack did very well driving the wheels off the robot to make an unblemished win streak and to score 49 points (out of a max of 60) in a single match.

Trip Reports

Foster

These are the quick notes from my trip to IRI.

Thursday - My car (Clem, Siri, Rizzo, Carley, Jen) left at exactly 8:30AM according to plan. After a short stop in Bedford we arrived at the Mecca of West Virgina Quaker Steak and Lube about 1PM. After fueling up on world class wings we headed west on I70. A mere 3 hours later we were at our next milestone Fricker's Chicken in Vandalia. After eating their world class wings and Chicken Chunks (are you seeing a theme here?) we got back on I70 to head towards the hotel. Wow, is I70 long and straight!

The trip was filled full of music, bad puns, silly stories etc. The best part was the mini-button factory that did the final assembly of I'm xxx on CD and the Non-engineering Mentor buttons Doing all the work that isn't rocket science for Friday.

It was cool to have technology in the car, we were able to keep up with CD and news of closing the oil well off. I wrote the first part of this post on I70 just outside of Indiana. (Did I say I70 was long?)

We checked into the hotel and then it was off to Dave & Busters to deliver some buttons, Frickin Chicken Chunks to my sister and to meet the mentors. We spent about 2 hours there meeting new people, playing some games for cool prizes and having an end of the day beverage. Siri's buttons were a bigh hit, people were happy to get them.

I met the wonderful Jane Young, Alan, Andy and Mark of AndyMark fame and spent some time talking to Ed from Rochester. Rizzo met most of the judging staff and swapped some "Well when I was reffing there was this team ..." stories. A pretty good session to close off the first day of IRI.

Friday Dawn in Indianpolis came early, the final set of people didn't arrive until 2AM, so they had to sleep fast. But, when I got to the breakfast area most of our team was eating breakfast. We got out of the hotel about 7:20 and headed over to the school.

The school is huge with two huge gyms. One that has an indoor 1/4 mile track, the other that holds 2 full sized basketball courts.

I was busy working with Jack getting him set up with the VEX and getting the two demo robots ready to go so others could play on the. Jack did a great job of keeping the robot running and an even better job of driving the wheels off of it. It was a tough schedule with three matches in each round and three rounds. The finals were best out of three and Jack ended up with a flawless record of 11-0. He also had the high score of the day at 49 points.

The big robot also had a pretty good day. We had some amazing partners that we played with and against. We closed out the day in 21st place. Somewhat due to our good seeding, somewhat due to the improvements we made to the robot.

Dinner was cafeteria style with salad, lasagna, bread, and 5 kinds of dessert. I had a chance to eat with my sister. I don't see her very often and to be honest mostly at robot events. She had been a scorer / queue manager for most of the day (71 matches) so I got to hear about her day.

The talent show was amazing, the acts were good, but the best part were the comments (written on whiteboard) by the panel of judges. Needs more cowbell takes on a new meaning! The best act was a spinny lighted ball act set to music that was very impressive. The encore with the Tesla music machines was very cool.

So far IRI has exceeded my idea of what it would be like. I've see great robots in action and I've been able to go up and talk to the builders on how the robot works. People have been super nice helping out where they can. This has got to be one of the best organizied events that I've been to.