Week goal

Our goal for the week is to build the arm to score points by putting the footballs over the wall and dropping balls inside the little goal area.  Once the arm is built we intend to attach it to the body of the robot we have.  After this we will figure out what we must do which could range from just adding weight to the back to balance it out, upgrading the arm, adding plows or something etc. etc. etc.  I probably should have said this next part first but oh well.  Anyways our robot is coming along pretty nicely.  We have the body built but still need to figure out where to put the battery, cortex, and the arm that we are currently building.  For the body of the robot we have used the smallest wheels we have but with a catch.  Mr. Shoemaker our teacher for the class had talked to me about how these wheels have something most people just don't notice.  This is where you take off the tire part of the wheel so it is just the actually wheel or technically speaking the rim.  This does have less traction but we don't really need traction for this build and game we are playing.  What these wheels do have is enough traction to get actually work and pretty well too.  But the ability he had talked about was how that it could slide around easily.  This will be good for the game so we can turn faster, which we will need for these playing fields.  This will be about how fast you can get balls to the other side of the field while making sure your opponent doesn't put more on your side than you on theirs.  The playing field isn't that big either so we don't need the most traction especially since other robots won't be ramming us and we will need to be able to turn faster to act faster than our opponents.

New groups for sweep away

The new group seems good. I'm working with both Matt's again. There is also a guy named James in the group but he wasn't there today. From what the others say he may be a problem but I don't think it's anything to worry about. This new competition seems strange. I'm trying to think of a design but it seems I may be thinking things to complicated. Overall we should do fine.

Protoball coments

Well I would say our group did good in the competition.  We came first in the tournament with group six.  As said earlier we really wouldn't change anything but if we could we would have gotten new motors since ours were shot. I am very pleased with how our robot did and am pleased at what we placed in the competition.

Protoball v2 and changes

Well this is a good group we have.  I like most of the stuff we have been doing and wouldn't really change anything.  But if i could have changed something me and my group agrees that we would've gotten new motors if the chance is possible since ours have been practically shot and don't work as good as they used too.  In the competition our group is doing pretty well.  Even though our motors aren't the best, we still have enough power to push our way through most other robots which really is our whole plan.  So our group is doing pretty well and we really wouldn't change anything except getting new motors if we could have.

Tuesday goal

The goal for Tuesday is just make sure all our nuts and bolts are tightened and not falling off. The progress we made today or Monday wasn't really anything. Only one guy in our group was actually working since we didn't really have anything to do. We did change our conveyer belt but other than that we didn't really do anything.

Thursday Goal

Thursdays goal again is simple.  We decided to take off the ramp for other robots to get on our robot to get the extra 10 points and instead are working on a way to get our own robot off its wheels.  We have some ideas but aren't sure if they will work.  But overall today is another building day with very little left to do.

Wednesday Goal

Our groups goal for tomorrow is to continue to build our robot.  Even though there is a lot of time left we are basically done with the build.  We may add a few things here and there as time goes on but mostly we are done.  Tomorrows goal isn't really anything at all, just to add more adjustments maybe make our ramp for other bots to drive up better or something small like that.

Monday Goal

Our team is pretty good.  I would say we are making very good progress and all we really need to do is add more miscellaneous stuff that isn't needed but will help.  For Monday all we plan to do is add more to our robot and make it much better.

New Team/Monday goal

Well the new groups we got seem pretty good.  I think i will be able to work and get along with my group members just fine.  They have some "fun" ideas i guess you could say and were pretty much building a box tank.  For Monday all we are really going to do is to continue building and improving our tank.  We've got a lot of it done so with all this extra time on our hands we will be able to vastly improve our robot to win on the new protoball game.

Conveyor Belt/ Linear thing/ L.E. plan

We made a conveyor and a linear moving thing.  Me and Matt were working on the conveyor belt while Nick and Matt was working on the linear moving thing.  There was little difficulty while making them.  We just had to make sure everything fit and all that.  One of our motors did break though and we need to get it replaced.  For our Luke-Ericsson device we are going to be using the conveyor belt and linear thing.  We will also be using some of our large C. channels to have the tennis ball move from one thing to another and our debating whether to also make a catapult or a claw to finish it.  We will also be adding a few things in between but are not positive what that will be.

Protoball gme plan

We decided to go with smaller wheelsin back and omni wheels infront so they are even we will mostly stay on offense and will try to outscore our opponent.  Our robot has some nice advantages such as the omni wheels where we can spin around the opponent to score.  But the problem we have found is that something is going wrong.  Its either our battery or motor.  The motor doesn't make sense though since we changed it with a new one but it was still teh same side that was having problems.  Hopefully we can find the problem on Monday.

Protoball

For the protoball game we have decided to use omni wheels in front and the all terrain or larger wheels in the back.  We are expecting this to make it turn faster and to move faster hopefully this will help for the game.

Omni/Tank drive system

Well it was rather easy to install the omni wheels.  They made our robot turn much faster and easier and were around the same speed as regular wheels.  But the problem we experienced with them is that it is very hard to control and turns just too easily.  Now the tank treads we had some problems with.  at first it was getting the design then our motors wouldn't work right, then we had to remake the tank treads, and our battery and charger was having problems as well.  But eventually we got them to work and found out that tank treads have great traction but move extremely slow.  Which also made them turn pretty slow.

Robot Larger Wheels Effect

For our robot we had to put on bigger wheels to see the outcome.  I had predicted that the wheels will make it go faster, but it would make the turning worse.  After we put the wheels on that was the exact outcome, making my prediction correct.

Robot finish/tests

We finished our robot on Thursday.  It was pretty easy to finish on time.  We only had a little difficulty putting  some of the screws down where there was little room for our hands.  The wiring was over all easy.  We did have a few problems with a motor getting jammed but we eventually got it fixed with some help.  Our robot works perfectly. When we tested it out the next day it worked pretty well.  Some of the parts started getting loose but it was an easy fix.  The tests were fairly easy.  Some times it was difficult to pick up the tennis balls but fairly easy.  Our biggest problem for the tests though was dropping the tennis balls back into the bucket but we got it done.  Overall I'm proud of the build and say we did a good job.

Proto-Bot progress

So far everything seems to be going how it should.  Sometimes finding the right screw gets to be annoying though.  Our robot has the wheels on it and we are currently working on the arm to pick up tennis balls.  Since all of our parts have been organized by drawer it makes things a lot more easier.  Our robot without any unforeseen complications should be done by early Thursday or late Wednesday.  Now our programming could be done by Thursday or Friday. 

Robotics Kit organized Progress

So far we have already checked that we had all the parts and have mostly organized them.  Our group still hasn't taken pictures and catalyzed them.  After Monday we should have most if not all the pictures taken of the different parts we have. So if we also work on the catalog Monday and Tuesday after we have gotten all the pictures we should be done by Wednesday.

BIO: Tyler Lovell

Tyler Lovell

• Age !5, grade 9th
• One Sibling younger brother
• Hobbies are Sports and reading
• Some Experience in robotics
• Some experience building with woods, metals, and Lego's.
• Some experience in programming
• A little experiencing in wiring
• Not good at brainstorming
• Joined robotics to learn more about it
• Expecting to learn and accomplish a lot in this class

BIO: Matthew Hagerman

Matthew Hagerman

• Age 16, 11th grade.
• Hobbies are playing video-games and talking to friends on Skype.
• Two siblings both older sisters.
• No experience in robotics
• Some experience in building Lego's
• No experience in programming
• No experience in wiring
• Good at brainstorming
• Wanted to join robotics for the experience
• Expecting to stay at average accomplishment wise.
• Expecting to learn a lot in this class.
• Planning to build a robot that will be able to throw things.

BIO: James Wilson

James Wilson

• Age 16, 10th grade.
• Has Experience building with Lego's, and tears apart to see how it works.
• Some experience in programming specifically with websites.
• Hasn't built & programmed robots before.
• Good at brainstorming.
• Thinks will be good at wiring otherwise no experience in the subject.
• Joined robotics class because he wanted to do robotics club last year but couldn't get in so he joined the robotics class this year.
• He is expecting to accomplish some things in this class.
• He is expecting to learn a lot in this class.
• He is planning to build a robot that can lift various objects.