Downingtown Area Robotics

From DEW Robotics
Revision as of 23:43, 30 April 2011 by Carly (talk | contribs) (Competitions)

Jump to: navigation, search
Team members: Please look at the Team Announcement page to find the latest on the schedule, events, etc. Remember to read about Current Events coming your way, and the News of what we've done!


Congratulations to FRC Team 1640, Winner of the Philadelphia Regional! Click here for video of the FIRST Robotics Championship.


Congratulations to the VEXMEN!!! At the World Championships the entire team won the Teamwork Award, Team 81 won the Think Award for their autonomous programming. Team 80 won the highest award the Excellence Award for the combination of their robot, engineering notebook, video and web site.


At the same time at the PennState Fire Fight contest, VEXMEN teams were winning more awards:

1st Place: Awesome Tacos
2nd Place: Ostap Connection: (Matt and Dad - Mike)
3rd Place: Team Walrus (Melissa and Claire)
Innovate/Create - Awesome Taco
Innovate/Create - Lady Death Strike


We have moved into the new Downingtown Robotics Center 320 Boot Road. VEX Meets Tuesday and Wednesday nights from 6:30-8:30PM. During the FRC build season the FRC team meets Monday-Friday from 6:15-9PM, Saturday and Sunday from Noon-6PM. The DEWBOT VII Build page has all the daily action!


Congratulations to Foster Schucker and Steve Rhoads for winning Mentor of the Year at the VEX World Championships


Team photo at Finger Lakes Regional|Shipping panels

Who we are

Downingtown Area Robotics in Downingtown Pennsylvania, is a group of Students, Mentors and Sponsors, that knows it's important to get students interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) based careers. We do this through competition robotics. Our robots work in teams of two or three, working together as team on a common goal (not the robots that try to destroy each other.)

Driving the robots in Competitions is a small part of what we do. From the beginning we teach each roboteer valuable life skills like communications, planning, getting a group consensus, cooperation and negotiations. We also bring to life STEM skills in areas of electronics, mechanics, pneumatics, programming by planning, designing, building (and sometimes rebuilding), testing and driving our robots.

Contact us at DEWBOTROBOT at Yahoo dot com for more information.

Competitions

We build robots for three different competitions, FIRST Robotics Competition the VEX Robot Challenge and the FIRST Lego League.

"FRC Logo"
FIRST Robotics Competition robots are large (120 lb) and complex. A new robot is designed and built each year in 6 weeks using diverse materials and methods to meet the unique challenges of the year’s competition. A commercial industrial controller controls the robot. The team must brainstorm, prototype, design, procure materials, build, program and test the robot within a very limited time and financial horizon. Robots are fully designed in CAD prior to building. Mathematical models are created and used as design aids. A bill-of-materials is generated and utilized to manage procurement, cost and weight (the latter two are constrained) in real time. This is a real engineering project! Building methods utilize a range of power tools (mill, lathe, band saws, drill presses,...), MIG welding, polycarbonate vacuum forming and composite materials. New materials and methods are added each year. Students benefit from mentors' experience in a wide range of technical disciplines.
Team 1640 competed at the Finger Lakes (RIT, Rochester NY 3-5 March-2011) and Philadelphia (Temple University, Philadelphia PA 7-9 Apr-2011) Regional Competitions, winning the latter as alliance captain. The team has received a number of awards highlighting their demonstrated engineering & innovation skills including the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Control Award at Chesapeak in 2009, the Xerox Creativity (Philadelphia) and (BR)2 Engineering Excellence Awards in 2010 and the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Control Award at Philadelphia in 2011. This year, for the first time, Team 1640 attended the FRC Championship at St. Louis on 27-30 April-2011.


"VEX Logo"
VEX Robots must fit into an 18" cube and do not have a weight limit. Parts may only be purchased from VEX, but they can be cut and shaped any way provided there are no sharp edges. Parts may only be bolted together, no assembly with glue or tape is allowed. There is a limit of ten motors and/or servos. The robot is powered by a single 7.2 volt battery.
We have 15 teams that participate in the VEX Robot Challenge. In 2010 Team 80 - Pegasus along with Team 81 Longshot went to the VEX World Championships. Two of our mentors, Foster Schucker and Steve Rhoads were awarded Mentor of the Year.
Our regular season is from September to May, but we do summer activities. Starting in fall of 2010 we compete under the name VEX-MEN (yes, a play on X-Men).


"FLL Logo"link=http://usfirst.org
FIRST Lego League are smaller robots that are made out of Lego parts. Teams build robots to perform autonomous missions. These missions may require the robot to do one or more steps. This is a very exiting robot competition allowing students to bring special skills to the competition table.
The 2009/2010 FLL competition season is over, but watch this space, we are planning a spring session to do a different set of missions. See us at the May 3 Science Fair


Teams

There are a number of teams that make up Downingtown Area Robotics(FRC, VRC and FLL):

FIRST Robotics Competition -- FRC Team 1640, Team Sab-BOT-age - Every year we build a new robot, they are all called DEWBOT (from Downingtown East and West roBOT) and are numbered. The 2011 robot is called DEWBOT VII. Start with the overview of DEWBOT VII to get an idea about this years game Logomotion and our robot.
Downingtown Area Robotics (FRC & Vex)
VEX Robot Challenge -- VRC Team 80 -- our "All girl team" for 2009-2010
VEX Robot Challenge -- VRC Team 81
VEX Robot Challenge -- VRC Team 82
VEX Robot Challenge -- VRC Team 84
VEX Robot Challenge -- VRC Team 89
VEX Robot Challenge -- VRC Team 90
VEX Robot Challenge -- VRC Team 92
VEX Robot Challenge -- VRC Team 96
VEX Robot Challenge -- VRC Team 98
VEX Robot Challenge -- VRC Team 1640


FIRST Lego League -- FIRST Lego League 2009 Teams 2028 & 7230

Meeting Information

Team Sab-BOT-age, the FRC team and the VRC teams meet year round. Below is the latest information on their meeting times and places.

FRC Team 2011 Season -- DEWBOT VII - Please look at the FRC 2011 Calendar to see all the work nights in the build season. Team members should also check the Team Announcement page for the latest updates. Click here for the DEWBOT VII Build Season daily activity!

VEX 2010-11 Season -- Wednesday 6:30-8:30 Downingtown Educational Center. Our 2010-11 season playing Round Up (info and schedule) has started.

We have started an "All-Girl" VEX Team 80 - Pegasus, come join them

FIRST Lego League -- The season for our FIRST Lego League team is over. Watch for news of our spring missions.

Come to one of our team meetings or contact us: Dewbotrobot at Yahoo dot com

Other committee meetings

The Steering Committee meets on the last Friday of the month at 6:15PM With build season going on and there being a large number of the Steering Committee at the build sessions, there are no formal meeting until the last Friday in April. If you have an item for the Steering Team contact them at the build session.

People

"People Names""

Thank you very much to all of our sponsors!

We would like to express our appreciation to all of our Mentors that work with the roboteers on a day to day basis.

Each student that worked on a robot is listed with that robot. Across the years we have graduated some very impressive students, you may be or soon will be working for our Alumni.

And a final thank you to all the parents that help us out.

Engineering

We do a lot of engineering. There are a lot of details and information that go into making a robot right. For example if you are going to drill a hole for an 8-32 screw you use a #16 drill, but if you want to tap the hole (thread it) you use a #29 drill. Most of us can't remember all that, so we've created a series of pages that holds all that information.

Click here for Engineering references and links.

Safety

We are very safety oriented, we have a safety captain to monitor all aspects of our build process.

All of our middle school students are trained on hand tools before they are allowed to use them. They use hacksaws and files while wearing safety glasses. Middle schoolers are supervised by either a mentor or one of our senior FRC students while they cut and form metal parts.

All of our high school students are trained on the power tool before they use it. Safety eyeware is worn at all times in the shop. First year FRC roboteers may only use power tools under the supervision of a mentor or one of our senior FRC students.

We hold regular safety meetings to reinforce our safety policy.

Website

The Downingtown Area Robotics website is made with valid XHTML and CSS and complies with Section 508 accessibility guidelines. This site is powered by MediaWiki, the same software that powers Wikipedia.

As of 1 August 2010 there were over 289 pages of content, 2500 pictures (with captions) and 280 documents that describe our robots. If you have problems finding a specific page, try the search box at the left.

If you have questions or comments please contact us at DEWBOTROBOT at yahoo dot com.