Difference between revisions of "Team 1640 2011 Summer Program"

Revision as of 02:19, 9 August 2011

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.

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

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

The plan for this talk is to start with the basics of programming, regardless of programming language. As interests warrant and time allows, we can venture into other topics such as LabVIEW specifics, Scrum and agile development, and the Mercurial source control framework.

11 August

16 August

18 August

23 August

Design

3 August

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

With any luck, this meeting will be held at our new (temporary) location.

The session will start with a discussion of the new team organizational structure. Afterwards, we'll have another build challenge with more concentration on design process integration. This time, groups get to build a Popsicle stick "tower" utilizing only hack saw blades and culminating with an impact test (textbook drop). If time allows and the group is interested, we may be able to get more robot-y.

17 August

It's robot time! Despite our austere facilities, we're up for more robot-centered work. We'll be starting design reviews and hypothetical projects (either in theory or hands-on) and getting rookies, veterans, student leaders and even mentors ready for build season under the new team structure.

24 August

31 August