FIRST Robotics

The 2013 Silicon Valley Regional just finished up, and it was a blast. Only losing one match, the Cheesy Poofs really made their presence known. The Cheesy Poofs hung at the 30 point level in almost every match, being one of two teams to do so. The event was incredible. On Saturday, the Poofs sat with 233, the Pink Team. Both teams sang, danced, and cheered all throughout the tournament for each other, creating an atmosphere that was both fun to watch and be a part of. For elimination rounds, the Cheesy Poofs partnered up with 118, the Robonaughts (from Texas), and 1967, the Janksters (From Bellarmine's sister school, Notre Dame). The alliance didn't lose a single match, and scored the highest score at SVR, breaking 200 points.

Thursday: Day 1

It started off with students waking up bright and early, arriving at San Jose State University around 5:45 AM. There, they waited in line to get the best seats to help with scouting and viewing. Thursday was purely practice rounds, so all robots didn't make an appearance. Team 254 spent the beggining portion of the day making updates to the robot, and got in a couple practice matches at the end to ensure it was working properly.

Friday: Day 2

Once again, students woke up early and arrived at 5:45 AM. Friday was purely qualification matches, which meant these were the ones that determined what place you were in for alliance picking. Every one of these matches was scouted diligently by Team 254's scouting team, and that data was used to help determine which team would make the ideal alliance when coupled with the Cheesy Poofs. Friday had a few quarcks, which were quickly overcome. Besides match two (where a frisbee got jammed in the intake), Team 254 went undefeated. During the awards ceremony, the Cheesy Poofs earned the Engineering Excellence Award, given to teams that demonstrate a robot with high technical proficiency.

Saturday: Day 3

Saturday was more layed back for the students in the morning. They arrived at 7:00 AM, and sat next to Team 233, the Pink Team. The teams cheered on each other, and any other team that was playing. This, coupled with the singing and dancing between each match, resulted in an encredibly enthousiastic environment. Qualification matches continued until lunchtime, and once again the Poofs went undefeated. The Cheesy Poofs placed first place, which meant they could choose their alliance partner first. Team 254 chose Team 118, the Robonaughts (from texas). For their second pick, Team 254 chose Team 1967, the Janksters (from Bellarmine's sister school, Notre Dame). Together, this alliance went undefeated in quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals.

Updates

Friday, 9:30am - Won the first match of the 2013 SVR with a score of 133 to 9. Thanks 295 & 2489!

Friday, 10:30am - Lost our second match of the day due to a jamming issue with the intake (47-49). However, we pulled off our first ever competition 30 point hang. Should be ready to go for our next match against 118 in an hour or so.

Friday, 11:35am - Just won our third match of the day against our friends the Team 118 Robonauts from NASA Johnson Space Center (112-96)! This match also featured our second ever competition 30 point hang which gave us the edge and helped us win the match. We're excited to be on the same side of the field as 118 in the next match as we take on our friends on 971.

Friday, 1:35pm - Just put up a high score with our friends from Team 118 (165-144). Both sides broke the previous event high score!

Friday, 3:20pm - Won match 40 with a score of 132-64. Shot a frisbee while hanging and it almost made it in!

Friday, 4:10pm - Won match 55 with a score of 78-43. Had some issues with the hanging mechanism.

Friday, 4:55pm - Another wild match, this time against our friends from Texas, 148. We pulled off the win with a score of 152-110. Our spirits are as high as our robot is hanging.

Friday, 6:30pm - Won the Engineering Excellence Award! That's it for the day - see you all tomorrow!

Saturday, 9:10am - Won our first match of the day with a score of 162-49. Had some jamming in the conveyor midway through the match but a quick 30 point hang combined with awesome help from 115 & 4159 allowed us to pull of the win. We're currently ranked #1 and have two matches left before lunch!

Saturday, 11:10am - Won match 87 with a score of 126-76. Had a blast playing with our friends on The Pink Team for the first time since going to Einstein together in 2010.

Saturday, 11:35am - Just won our last qualification match with a score of 119-33. Alliance selections are coming up soon. It's looking like we'll be #1 seed! Yeah buddy!

Saturday, 1:00pm - Alliance Selection is over. We're the captain of the #1 alliance and we'll be playing with 118 & 1967. The team is real excited to play with our fellow NASA house team and the Janksters from Bellarmine's sister school. The elimination matches will start soon.

Saturday, 2:10pm - Won both of our quarterfinal matches (and absolutely loving our alliance)! Moving on to the semifinals...

Saturday, 3:20pm - And we won both of our semifinals (and broke 200 points for the first time at this event). Finals, finals, finals!

Saturday, 4:00pm - Finals match 1 resulted in a win for the #1 Alliance! One of our hooks didn't catch so Overkill only made it to a 20pt hang. Final 2 is coming soon!

Saturday, 4:20pm - Although our robot lost communication partway through the match, our awesome alliance partners managed to hold strong. Silicon Valley Regional Champions! What a way to end our 15th Silicon Valley Regional!

Qualification Matches

Qualification 1 Win 133-9 Video

Qualification 13 Loss 47-49 Video

Qualification 24 Win 112-96 Video

Qualification 31 Win 165-144 Video

Qualification 40 Win 132-64 Video

Qualification 55 Win 78-43 Video

Qualification 61 Win 152-110 Video

Qualification 71 Win 162-49 Video

Qualification 87 Win 126-76 Video

Qualification 92 Win 119-33 Video

Regional Winner

Engineering Excellence Award Winner

9-1-0 Record in Qualifying with 18 Qualifying Points, Ranked 1 of 59 Teams

Elimination Matches

Alliance #1: 254, 118, 1967

Quarterfinal 1-1 Win 174-77 Video

Quarterfinal 1-2 Win 193-85 Video

Semifinal 1-1 Win 206-144 Video

Semifinal 1-2 Win 134-68 Video

Final 1 Win 203-36 Video

Final 2 Win 125-77 Video

Today was an eventful day to say the least. The team worked hard to finish the necessary tasks before SVR including packing, calibrations, and assembly of subsystems for the competition robot. A new hanger was assembled for the comp bot as well.

 

Programmers

Programmers worked primarily on the hanger today, using gyros on the robot to calibrate the hang and make the autonomous work accordingly. After hours of testing and calibrations the programmers were fine tuning the timing of the hang phases.

 

Robot

The drive team practiced with the robot today, in order to get ready for SVR and practice getting setup for hanging. However, unfortunately while practicing hanging, the robot dramatically fell off the top of the pyramid and consequently suffered some damage; a belt on one of the hangers broke. Since we do not have enough spare belts we cannot fix the practice bot hangers until after SVR. On another note, the students replaced the banebots wheels on the shooter with a polyurethane wheel to test if it significantly improved results. However, this new wheel did not seem to improve the robot's shooter. After SVR, the team will look for other options for wheels.

Manufacturing and Assembly

Today students recieved the powder coated hanger and intake parts, and worked on assembly drive gearboxes and hanger mechanisms to bring to SVR and equip on the competition robot. Afterwards, students worked on making polycarb flaps for the loading mechanism on the robot.

 

Packing for SVR

Students began to pack items needed for competition at SVR including the toolchest, and part bins. The clear part bins were packed intro crates 5, 2, & 3. Additionally, boxes 8 and 4 were consolidated into one, and box 1 was packed with important programming parts and tools. Finally box 7 was packed with small clear boxes of parts.

 

Lab Closing Time: 3:00 AM

Open Field

Today the lab was opened for Teams 4543 (Apollo High School) and Team 971 to use our field for calibration and driver practice, while working on bugs in preperation for SVR (where both robots will be competing).

Driver Practice

Today Driver Abhi Kumar, and Operators Chris Sides and Scotty Cardona all practiced on the field, specifically picking up discs from the area around the pyramid and shooting into the high goal from the pyramid. The robot was about 76% accurate (data taken by scouts). We hope to improve accuracy to over 90% before SVR. One of the main points of improvements are the BaneBot shooter wheels that need replacing.

Chairman's Award

Today students took many major steps in preparation to present the Chairman's Award at SVR. One aspect of this work was the development of the the team binder, with students formatting the various pages of the binder. Additionally the presenters (Richard Lin, Alex Powers, and Nagy Hakim) prepared for the judges interview, working on the power point and the question and answer section.

Manufacturing

Students constructed beam sensor mounts for the robot. These beam sensors will be used to determine whether or not a disc has reached the back of the conveyor to be properly indexed.

Hanger

Furthermore, the development of the hanger continued, with elevator belts being tensioned, and manufacturing shafts for the belt. Two of the three new hangers are ready to be attached to the competition bot, with the third functioning as a spare to be put on either side; due to this orientability, it will not be fully assembled until it is attached.

 Lab closing time was: very late.

Hanger

The highlight of today was beginning assembly of the hangers for the competition robot. We plan to finish fully assembling these soon. We are constructing 3 identical hanger assemblies so as to have one extra.

Machining

We also made some new parts for the level one hanger on the CNC. This will soon be sent for powercoating  The pocketed first stage parts are significantly lighter than they previously were. They also look quite pretty.

SVR Preparations

Students also worked on organizing supplies, tools, and equipment for SVR. The new clear bin system will make the pit significantly cleaner and easier to work in. We love organization (thanks T-Dog).

Programming

The programmers worked on fine tuning all of the autonomous modes: five-disc, four-disc, seven-disc, and center-disc.  With a lot of tweaking, the consistency of the various autonomous sequences have improved greatly.  However, late into the night, a shifting dog on the left gearbox of the drive train was completely shattered (yet again).  As a result, the robot's left drive won't work until the dog is replaced.

 

Lab closing time: 2:00 AM

On Wednesday, the team said that if we reached 2540 likes on our Facebook page or 2540 followers on our Twitter Account by April 3rd, a video of the world's fastest 30 point hang would be released. The threshold was met on the Facebook page just a day later on Thursday the 28th.

This is that video.

Hanger

While testing the hang speed late yesterday, the hanger malfunctioned. While it was on the third level hang, one of the arms bounced and did not latch, leaving the robot hanging from one arm. This torqued that arm at an angle, the belt snapped, and left other minor damages. Today, the students and the mentors worked to put it back together. The belt was replaced, and it is back on the robot, and working well.

Shooter/Indexer

After a lot of driver practice lining up to take shots, the shooter's consistency started to go down. Upon further inspection, one of the belts that was linking the two shooter shafts snapped and fell off the robot. In addition, the back shooter motor is shot. The robot still shoots the frisbees, but not up to the speed and distance it should be at.

Slipstream

Slipstream is now fully functioning. It will be used for programming purposes, sensor verification, and demonstrations.

After a quick driver's practice today, a programming issue occured with the autofire shooting. With the indexer physically jamming as well as the software causing jamming while shooting, practice was stopped and efforts were put towards making sure the robot was fully functional. After the programming and hardware issues were solved, drivers continued practicing.

Intake

Last night, wooden support blocks were added to the practice robot's intake to help keep the polycarbonate bottom plate pushed to the ground. No other modifications were made to the intake, and in its current state it is working moderately well.

Shooter/Indexer

The new indexer system that feeds one frisbee at a time has eliminated the issue of the indexer not fully engaging over the frisbee, which caused jamming (such as in San Diego). While testing today, frisbees were jamming below the indexer, which students quickly discovered was caused by a loose piston Tightening the piston solved any jamming issues. Continued testing of the shooter proved extremely improved consistency and power while using the new banebot motors.

Slipstream

Slipstream was brought to NASA from its home at the Bellarmine Robotics lab and repaired by students today. After being restored to driving condition and reprogrammed by students, it is up and running and ready to be used to practice defense. Students and mentors will drive Slipstream as a defensive robot while the drive team runs drills with Overkill to give a more realistic situation and challenge them to adapt to a multitude of different scenarios.

Competition Preparation

In preparation for SVR, students populated a list of supplies to buy, as well as continued to organize the current list with new bins that were bought. By separating the different supplies into individual bins the process of pit setup will be streamlined, as well as creating a more organized pit overall.

After ten minutes of driver practicing, the team still determined that one glaring problem still exists that currently precedes all others: the robot's intake system inconsistently picks up frisbees. 

Intake

The team technical leaders gathered to decide on a solution for the intake problem.

Issues:

• Frisbees stack on top of each other inside shooter indexer
• Intake shelf/ramp causes discs to stall
• Whether or not bottom roller should be used

 After a comprehensive discussion about the next step, the team concluded that the next step would be to revert back to the old intake and iterate from there.

​Solution to test:

• Remove frisbee ramp 
• Replace bottom roller​

Shockwave

Further development of the T-shirt cannon, Shockwave, was continued today, led by Richard Lin. The programming team added the indexing code which rotates the barrels for the next shot. Controls are still under maintenance to ensure safe and proper performance during exhibitions. This will require extensive robot testing by mentors before it can be used in public. 

Intake

The team is currently working on redesigning the intake to intake discs more effectively.  There are multiple issues with the current iteration, such as stacking when intaking multiple discs.  As of now, students are experimenting by attaching two small Banebots wheels in the front roller shaft.  In addition, they have added a polycarbonate ramp that slants upward into the robot.  Once the intake is fully designed and works reliably, the programmers can test their autonomous modes.

Shooter

The shooter is currently under construction, and removed from the robot.  Students manufactured more parts for the shooter.  For instance, they created shafts using the lathe and bandsaw.

Programming

The programmers continued to fine-tune and modify the seven-disc autonomous sequence.  Specifically, they made adjustments to the robot's driving and intaking.  Since the shooter is currently detached, no shooting was done or tested.

In other news, the programmers had some connection and network troubles with robot, driver station laptop, and programming laptops.  The robot's connection with the driver station occasionally drops for about a second.  Additionally, the programmers were unable to FTP to the robot to deploy code while the driver station laptop was connected to the robot.  Students and mentors tried to debug the situation for a long time, but were unable to pinpoint the issue.  They will look further into the problem in the coming days.

Food

The students also enjoyed some delicious BBQ for dinner, as well as ice cream for a late night delight.

Indexer

The polycarb flap that indexes the frisbee was modified to be thicker. The indexer superstructure was changed and we reverted to old butcher knife plates to lower compression on the disc. The default state of the indexer was also changed from the bottom to the top. The team is making these modifications to increase the rate at which the robot shoots discs.

Wheels

Team members took apart old wheels, cleaned them up and removed old rivets and tread. The wheels were not re-treaded.

Sensors

Members started wiring the photoelectric sensors for the shooting and indexing sequence.  This would optimize and speed up rapid firing as well as autonomous mode.