blog

Since then . . .

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 01:15:58 +0100

Since participating in OKBEST, Team Phoenix has concentrated on learning more about the LEGO Mindstorms NXT robotics kit. The Mindstorms kit is truly remarkable, and a wonderful piece of equipment on which to learn. It's simple enough that kids in the 8-10 year old range can learn to build robots, and sophisticated enough to provide challenges for high school teams. (In fact, the NXT and the earlier LEGO RCX robotics kits are a basic component of the BOTBALL and FIRST LEGO League competitions.)

The team has build many different projects, ranging from the plans that are included with the Mindstorms kit, to more advanced line follower robots, and some just for fun, like a trebuchet and a 'machine gun' that fires some of the small beam LEGO pieces.

However, the team is preparing to compete in the 2011 APEC Conference's MicroMouse competition, on March 7th, in Ft. Worth, TX. The team still doesn't have any funding, and no sponsors, so we're still limited to finding low- or no-cost means of competing.

The MicroMouse competition is generally comprised of college-level teams and individuals, and professional engineers--so it's at a level considerably higher than what the team would normally be competing in. Most MicroMouse robots are custom-built (though there are kits), and in order to be competitive, a robot must be able to very rapidly navigate through a maze to the center. Some MicroMouse robots can reach speeds of over 20 ft/sec., and our NXT-based robot simply is not capable of those kinds of speeds (even with the geartrains possible with all the LEGO pieces available). Still, when we're talking about high-school freshmen competing against graduate-level engineering students from around the world, as well as designs from professional engineer/hobbyists, even being able to successfully navigate the maze at all is going to be a wonderful achievement--one that we hope will garner Team Phoenix some of the attention it deserves.

History (Continued)

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 01:05:09 +0100

[Blogs always put the newest posts on top, which isn't very good for multi-message histories . . . ]

Needless to say, the original founding members were none too happy with having all their hard work thrown out, and for the most part were excluded from participating.

In their defense, the upperclassmen did have more experience in designing and building robots, but while their technical skills may have been superior, their team-building and leadership skills were perhaps not exactly ideal.

In any event, a minor revolt broke out. The end result was that the four freshmen who had started the robot for the OKBEST competition broke away from the Westmoore High School robotics team, and went their own way with the OKBEST kit. A couple of the freshmen elected to stay with the Westmoore club, as well as participate in the freshmen-only group.

Since the group of freshmen needed a name for their organization, and since they were having to start over from the beginning, Team Phoenix was a natural choice.

Working quickly, Team Phoenix re-designed their robot, which wasn't ready--or even functional--for that Saturday's Mall Day event. Still, attending the Mall Day event was a watershed moment for the members of Team Phoenix. It gave them the opportunity to see their competitors' designs--which helped tremendously in design of the arm.\

Additionally, the Mall Day was when the team's notebook was due. The team had hurriedly finished it up, and turned it in, hoping for the best.

Seeking to simplify the robot as much as possible, Team Phoenix abandoned the complicated gripper designs that had been proposed, and that other teams were using, in favor of a sort of spoon-shaped fixture on the end of the arm, with a slot cut into the spoon from the tip to nearly the end of the bowl, and with a wrist-type rotation mechanism. An analysis of the game field led to this. The traffic cones were slotted, and the spoon would fit into the slots. The arm would then elevate to lift the cone, and the robot driven across the field to the rack. The wrist rotation motor would then flip the cone over, and the arm would lower it into the rack. The slot in the spoon would be used to scoop up the magnet- or marble-filled easter eggs, to be transported to and dropped in the cones.

That was the theory, anyway.

Bryce Queri, our star programmer, had nearly the entire control program set up, prior to the upperclassmen taking over the robot. They deleted all his hard work, and instead had substituted their own--which proved less than ideal. Bryce, a drummer in the Westmoore band, had committments there that he had to attend, and so was tied up in the last days prior to the competition, and so Team Phoenix ended up having to compete with a less-than-optimum control program for their robot.

October 16th, the day of the competition, came very quickly. Team Phoenix worked until nearly 3 am the night before, but were at the competition site bright and early.

Arriving at the competition site, they were surprised to see people moving what appeared to be large sets into the building. The members of Team Phoenix were a little unsure; was there also some sort of drama competition going on at the same time, in the same building?

What it was (and there were some panels that looked like sets for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory!) were parts of various OKBEST teams' presentations. What we took were to be professional business sales presentations were in fact a wide-open, no-holds-barred, make-it-as-wild-as-you-want presentation, with full sets worthy of any drama club presentation; some had demonstrator robots, others had banks of computer monitors displaying animated robots. Clearly we were outmatched in the presentation department.

But pressing on, the team went on in and got their robot registered. The last part of the robot to be finished was the golf ball hopper/catcher, and upon viewing what other teams were using, ours was clearly too small. We quickly added additional duct tape to the walls which ended up looking like something from one of those cheesy duct tape prom dress and tuxedo competitions, but we had high hopes.

We were still rapidly working, as fast as we can, when the competition started. We had some sensor problems, with our design to interface with the game field, and were not able to overcome this. So we pressed on.

The competition consisted of 16 teams, including Team Phoenix, in several matches. Each team competed in four matches, each one against three other teams, in sequence. Each match was 3 minutes long.

It quickly became apparent that no one had been able to design and build a robot that could successfully reposition all three cones, the cart, the easter eggs, catch the golf balls, dump the golf balls in a sorting tray, and return both the cart and itself to the starting position, all in three minutes. It was just not possible. So most teams concentrated on either the cone/easter egg task, or the golf ball task.

Only a few robots were able to successfully pick up the traffic cones, flip them over, and put them in the racks. No one was able to successfully pick up an easter egg and get it into the upside down traffic cones. Several teams did have some success with moving the cart into position and picking up and dropping off golf balls.

Sadly, Team Phoenix didn't have much luck. The control program was the heart of the problem. Not having a sufficiently knowledgeable backup programmer to Bryce Queri, the controls were far too sensitive, and the arrangement of the functions on the controller left a lot to be desired. (Since then, the team has engaged in some in-depth programming training, both in NXT-G and in RobotC, in order to be better prepared for the future.)

Still, when it was all said and done, Team Phoenix placed higher than any other rookie team, making it into the wildcard game for the playoffs--where unfortunately, they lost. Still, it was an outstanding debut for a team that had to overcome so many obstacles, and was itself less than 10 weeks old.

History: OKBEST 2010

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 23:54:12 +0100

First off, a little history. (Please keep in mind this is all from my own recollection, so it may not match exactly what all the other team members recall.)

Bill Shenold, at the time an incoming freshman at Westmoore High School in August 2010, was more than a little disappointed to find that his high school had no robotics club. Oh sure, there was the Moore Norman Technology Center's pre-engineering curriculum, but being based on the vo-tech model, you had to be a junior or senior to participate. He even checked with the instructors there, and found that even as just a volunteer, there was no way he could participate.

Being a highly motivated young man, Bill didn't want to wait two more years to do something in robotics. So he began asking friends and acquaintances to see if there was any interest in forming a robotics club there at Westmoore. Mostly the other students he asked were involved in the Moore West Junior High's robotics club the previous year. Sure enough, there were a handful, and so with the involvement of a couple of student's parents (including me, Bill's dad, Sean) the Westmoore Robotics Club was formed.

However at that time we didn't have any official school sanction for the club, so technically we couldn't be the Westmoore Robotics Club.

Having started to organize, we began to try to figure out what we were going to do. An internet search of available options for competitions revealed that there were indeed many different organizations that foster education in robotics through various competitions, but nearly all of them required significant entry fees or at least the purchase of a kit. The one exception was BEST Robotics (Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology).

BEST did not have an entry fee. BEST also supplied a robotics kit, from which each team had to build their robot, at no cost to the team. This was fantastic! Being a newly-formed team, with no money whatsoever, this was a perfect fit for us.

The only problem was that the time to register a team was just about to expire. In fact, the only way Team Phoenix was able to compete was that there was a last-minute cancellation by another team, and with less than 1 hour left before registration closed, Team Phoenix registered for the local OKBEST competition.

Of course, we still didn't have official school sanction for our group. But having started overcoming obstacles from the beginning, we were'nt going to stop now!

We went to the kick-off event on the Saturday before Labor Day, at Oklahoma Christian University. There were just three of us there: Bill, Gina Gottschalk, and Bill's dad, Sean. Just about all the other teams brought 8, 10, or more members (in fact, by competition time we'd be facing some teams with 50 or more!). But we picked up our kit and learned what we could about the competition.

Each year, BEST's competition changes. This year, it was 'Total Recall'. We had to build a remote control robot, using a wireless VEX control system, that could navigate around a playing field, interface with a data port, move a cart from a starting position to where it needed to go (and close a couple of microswitches), move to where it could catch golf balls in some sort of holder, and move to a discharge tray and dump its load of different-colored golf balls. In addition, we had to have our robot pick up small traffic cones (of the type used on soccer playing fields), move them over to a rack, flip them over 180 degrees, and put them in the rack. Then we had to go pick up either magnet-filled or marble-filled plastic Easter eggs (though not both at the same time--by interfacing with the data port you found out whether for that round only you needed magnet- or marble-filled), and then put them in the upside-down traffic cones. And then return both the cart and the robot back to their starting points. Lastly, a Six Sigma scoring system was in place to penalize us for any errors or dropped golf balls or Easter eggs. And we had six weeks to design, build, and program our robot, using only the materials in the kit provided (plus a few minor add-ons, like cardboard, golf balls, and paperclips, if we chose to use them).

It sounds complicated, and it was. But they pressed on. The first event in the competition schedule was Mall Day, set for October 2nd, and two weeks before the competition. Mall Day, as the name implies, was originally set up to be held at a local mall. But after having difficulties finding a mall that would donate use of a sufficiently large open space, the OKBEST hub moved the Mall Day activities to Oklahoma Christian University. The local-level competition would be October 16th.

Meanwhile, as the wheels of the school bureaucracy turned oh-so-slowly, we still didn't have the official approval for our school-based club. But the clock was ticking and we couldn't wait.

So the group that would become Team Phoenix--Bill, Gina, Rheis Campbell, and Bryce Queri--began to meet at Gina's parents' house. They came up with a triangular drive base, using a half golf ball as a skid at the rear apex of the triangle (the kit didn't include casters of any kind), and used differential steering of two drive motors to move around. They also brainstormed about various arm and gripper designs.

Another important part of the competition was that the teams had to prepare a notebook, as well as write a paper on this year's subject, which was quality management systems. All in all, a pretty tough set of tasks for a group of four high school freshmen whose only experience with robots was BOTBALL and LEGO's Mindstorms NXT kit. But they faced this task with enthusiasm and pressed on.

Finally, in late September 2010, with the Mall Day activies the very next Saturday, the Westmoore Robotics Club was finally formed. The first order of business was to elect officers. Sadly, but predictably, all the officer positions were filled by upperclassmen, and none of the original founders were elected.

To make matters worse, the officers, who had not participated in any of the BEST Robotics activities the younger members had done, now took over the design, build, and programming efforts.

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Our new website

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 23:21:11 +0100

OK, we've just got our new website up and running! Here we'll try to keep all those interested up to date on what we've done and what we're going to do.