What I've been working on the past few months....

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cvec7

Gone - bye bye.
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Location
Anchorage
RC Driving Style
Robot_Feb20.jpg


Info:

http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/

Team website: http://www.battlefieldit.org/RoboticsWebsite/Templates/Home.htm

Game Design:
QT small: http://robotics.nasa.gov/events/first/AimHigh-Sml.mov (6mb)
QT med: http://robotics.nasa.gov/events/first/AimHigh-Med.mov (18mb)
MPEG: http://robotics.nasa.gov/events/first/AimHigh-Lrg.avi (55mb)

AIM HIGH is the name of this year’s competition. There is one alliance on either side of the playing field, each composed of three teams. The object of the game is to get a higher score than the opposing team by either shooting balls into the goals or having your robots on the platform at the conclusion of match. At the beginning of the game, there is a ten-second autonomous period where the robot operates without any human control. Next, there are two periods where each alliance switches from being either offense or defense. When a ball is hit thru the center goal, three points are scored. Each side goal is worth one point. At the end of the game, there is a forty second period in which both goals are turned on and the robots must climb a platform. Having one robot on the platform is worth five points, the second robot is ten points, and the third robot on the platform is worth twenty-five points. The team that comes away from the 130 seconds of competition with the most points wins the round.

Richmond, VA webcast:

http://www.virginiafirst.org/webcast.shtml

VA regional: Friday and Saturday



Misc facts:
TX and RX= $1150

Electronics overview:
FRC.jpg

Total robot cost: <$8,000
robot must weigh under 120lbs
ALL functions, even simple on/off ones must be programmed into the controller using C
Our robot uses 6 ESC's
All money comes from Grants and fundraising
We have 5 mentors from Lockheed Martin who come in regularly

The way our robot works: It runs over the balls, they get picked up by a conveyor belt, loaded into the "hopper'' then they roll down the hopper, into another conveyor, then up into the launcher which is similiar to a pitching machine. The launcher has a camera on it which is programmed to "hone" in on the light above the center goal, then aims the launcher accordingly.

I leave tommorrow morning for Richmond, so I get to miss 2 days of school :) lol
 
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Hey cool, good luck! Will you get any TV time? Every now and then you see these on TV usually in the middle of the night when nothing else is on or everyone is sleeping. Let us know how you do!
 
Thats bad azz, looks like some Monster Garage type poop. If you get a chance post a vid of that thing in action.

Good luck!!
 
Thanks guys, its been a long 2 months building this thing, and changing the design a million times, ect..... Just 2 days of competition and we're done....unless of course we place and go onto the Nationals in Atlanta, GA....

As for the tv coverage, I really don't know, but I suppose we'll find out when we get there...
 
Well, today was the first day of competing. There are about 64 teams at the event, and tommorrow are more matches. The top 8 get to go onto nationals in Atlanta, GA, and those 8 finalists get to pick who they want to come with them on their alliance......We won 4 out of the 5 matches we had today, and currently, we are ranked 4th out of 64 teams. And this is our first year doing FIRST also.... The first 3 matches were entirely luck, because our bot wasn't working right, and the people in our alliance were very good. But as the day went on, we actually did start to do better on our own, however, we still got carried a bit....but o well, I doubt we'll make top 8 tommorrow, but we do have a good shot at some of the rookie awards, and supposedly, if we win one, we get to go on to nationals...


O, and as for TV coverage....if you have the nasa tv channel, I believe it's on there live.
 
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cvec7 said:
We won 4 out of the 5 matches we had today, and currently, we are ranked 4th out of 64 teams. .
Click to expand...

Thats awesome! As far as getting help to win........A win is a win in my book.

Get ready for round 2, here's a banana for luck :banana:
 
man I'm stoked for you, that is to cool!

I've talked to a few people & none of us had ANYTHING like this when we were in school ....did you or your parents tape any of it? it be cool if you could post a video
 
And what will this be used for after the games? Hitting annoying 14 year olds like me? LOL

Anyways, that looks awesome. I just want to see it in action! As far as 4 out of 5, thats great! And don't doubt yourself. If you say you can't do it, you can't. If you say you can, you can! Simple as that.
 
Ya, we're the only school in the county w/ the program. Parents are coming tommorrow, and I'm sure they're bringing the camera, and if they do, I'll capture the vid from the camera and post up a vid next week. Also, don't forget, it can be watched here live: http://www.virginiafirst.org/webcast.shtml and the matches start at 9:20 EST. If you all would like, I can go ahead and post on here when our team is about to go up, because VCU has wifi, and I just got the login today....I was going to try to crack the encryption key for another network, but I don't know how to use airsnort or aircrack, and I left my phlak disc at home, lol.
Anyway, thanks for the support guys, next year I may have to see if I can get a RCNT logo on it, but we didn't even have room for our sponsors which were Micron, TKC Global solutions, Nasa, Lockheed Martin, and Drywall Systems (a local company, but still)
Anyway, when all is DONE, I think we plan on taking it to like hospitals and stuff, and visiting sick kids....at least that's what we planned, I doubt we'll be able to run it much, or shoot the balls, but still, it should be cool.
 
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Well, it's over for our team. We lost 2 of 3 matches, so we won 5 of 8, and placed 18th. We would have placed w/in the top 8, or have gotten picked for an alliance, if we didn't have some of the conflicts that we had between some of the students and teachers.
 
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wow cvec, :chillpill: lol i understand your anger man.. that sucks that it went downhill for your team. di dyou ever get the ball pickup working corectly?
 
you honestly want me to answer that?......yes, w did..... AFTER it was over....
 
wish i could get my school to do this my school is to busy doing stuipid clubs example rap club....
 
Well, I do have some good news.....after the matches were over (for us) we got the robot working fully...which is good because we won the Rookie All-Star Award.....which means that we go onto nationals in April even though we placed 18th! We are still all very irritated over the driver change, and the teacher still wants to keep the change which still irritates the hell out of us, but at least, between now and april, we'll have time to train this driver, perfect our programming code, ect....

Again on TV coverage, CBS and NBC were there, and likely won't be on national news or anything like that, but local news, yes.
As for a video, I'll look through the footage later this week, capture it, edit it, and post it up.. ;)

http://www.virginiafirst.org/awards.shtml
 
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Video!

http://soap.circuitrunners.com/2006/movies/virginia/va_043.wmv -one of our better matches...we're on red team, the big purple bot (team #1885), and it's like the first bot the camera zooms in on after autonomous mode.And the video beeing slightly glitchy...not our fault...blame nasa....always cutting corners, lol. (sarcasim, not beeing serious)

The 30th we're heading down to South Carolina for the Palmetto regional, then April 27th, we're heading down to Atlanta, GA for the world finals. I believe I called it nationals in previous posts, but really, it is the world finals...there are several other teams from other countries....teams from europe, south america, asia, ect...
 
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UPDATE: 4/1/06

We just got back from the Palmetto regional in South Carolina. We didn't do too well....won 4, lost 4, and came in 29th out of 48 teams....
However, we did take home the Rookie All-Star award! Which is the same award we won at the Richmond Regional!

1 month to world finals....

P.S, no, this is not an april fool's joke thing...

http://www2.usfirst.org/2006comp/Events/SC/awards.html
 
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Well, I am now in downtown Atlanta, GA here for the world final championship event. This event is HUGE. The WHOLE congress center is JUST for each team's tiny pit area of 10'x10'. There are hundreds of teams here from many countries. There's some from Israel, a few from Canada, one from Great Brittian, one from Mexico, another from Brazil, and also a Norweigen team.
Then, the WHOLE georgia dome is for the playing fields, where they have 4 fields set-up at once w/ simultaneous competitions going on all at once.
The team numbers go all the way down to #2 (you get assigned a number based on when you signed up, so since we're team 1885, that means we were the 1,885th team to sign up.) so team 2 has been doing this from the begining, and thus, they are sponsored by Ford Motor Company, and another team is sponsored by Daimler Chrysler.
Tommorrow, we start our competitions, today was just practice rounds. We have several flaws w/ our bot that we know will no way allow us to place even top 100 (there are hundreds of teams here) However, we have the Rookie All-Star award pretty much in the bag. We won it at the VCU and Palmetto regionals, and this time, we have sooo much more set-up. We have a whole modular pit design w/ a 42'' plasma tv playing a multimedia presentation (we are the only team w/ a plasma tv mounted 10' off the ground) and we also have a 19" LCD monitor playing a slide-show, and just an overall awesome booth and team. Later, once I have access to the pics, I'll post one up of our pit, because it is just simply amazing...
 
UPDATE: 4/29/06

Well, we placed 73rd in our division of 86 teams (4 divisions) so yea, we sucked, as we expected, but this was the BEST of the BEST, the creme of the crop, there's over 300 teams, w/ teams from 18 different countries around the world. In fact, right next to our pit, was an Israeli rookie team.

Anyway, we WON THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP ROOKIE ALL-STAR AWARD! Only 16 teams in the entire world have this award and we're one of them. The Rookie all-star award is the highest award a rookie team can win.

http://www2.usfirst.org/2006comp/Eve...IN/awards.html


http://soap.circuitrunners.com/2006/.../cmp_sf2-2.wmv - a great semifinal match to watch, where the competition is FIERCE.


So, just to tally score...

VCU Rookie All-Star (2006)
Palmetto Rookie All-Star (2006)
World Championship Rookie All-Star (2006)

We won the Rookie All-Star at EVERY competition we went to this season...
 
wow. one of the robots in the first link you put up reminds me of the robot from blank man. congradulation on winning THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP ROOKIE ALL-STAR AWARD.
 

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