1/28/10

1/28/10 – The mechanical group was working on the kicker. They were trying to re-figure out the Force needed to pull the kicker just as before. They also worked on prototyping the robot's arm which is based of a hypothetical idea. The shop-in-a-box painted part of the storage crate and measured the wood needed to build the interior shelf. The CAD group worked with the mechanical group by helping with the prototype kicker by simulating some of the parts in a CAD model of the kicker. There were some members who were working on figuring out how to build the field goal. They were making a list of materials needed to build the field goal. The software team has been trying to get autonomous mode and the camera working. Eddy got the robot to stop moving in a “jerky” way. Jatin an Ravi cleaned up the shop and entry way. They did a great job. It was very important to keep it clean.

Kickerrr

The mechanical group was working on the kicker. They were trying to re-figure out the force needed to pull the kicker. They also worked on prototyping the robotic arm which is based off an according idea. The shop-in-a-box team painted part of the storage crate and measured the wood needed to build the interior shelf. The CAD group is working with the mechanical group to help with the kicker. Others were working on building the field and make a list of materials needed to build the field goal. The programming team are still working on the Camera. Eddy was able to make the robot move more smoothly.

1/27/10

1/27/10 – Today, the mechanics group worked on the kicker mechanism. They figured out how to kick the ball without rolling it. Most of their time was spent on trying to figure out how to bring the ball on only spot. Also, they were trying to figure out how to control the angle of the ball when released. It was found out that if the distance from where the ball was hit was changed then the angle at which it was hit was altered. The programming team tried to get the camera to work. There were a few people working on painting the box. Three sides of the shipping crate were thoroughly and artfully painted and sketched with robot designs.

1/26/10

1/26/10 – The shop-in-a-box people went out to buy paint. They repainted the silver on the shop-in-a-box. Jerril made new posters to hang up around the school. The mechanical team tried to move the wheels up 2 inches on the chassis. They made a board to place the electrical wiring on. The software team was working on trying to get the camera on the old robot working with Java and the mini PC. Matt got a list of parts together for the goal and Matt and Jerril started working on the bumpers for the chassis of the robot.

1/24/10

1/24/10 – The mechanical group tried to see if the chains would actually fit if the tough boxes on the top of the chassis were put on the bottom. They figured out that the chains would get stuck on the bumpers. The tough boxes were put on the robot properly. The programming team worked on making the servos on the camera work. The people working with the crate on the shipping box were painting it.

1/23/10

1/23/10 – The prototype for the kicker was built which demonstrated that rolling the ball over the bump was actually plausible. However, there were often other problems or cons to this design. As someone pointed out, rolling the ball could easily be obstructed and throw it off its designated course. Neil still wanted to calculate the force needed for the prototype kicked. They took known masses and lifted the kicker so the mass would pull on the kicked. They figured out the force using F=mg, or force equals mass * gravity. The mechanical team changed their design from being wide to being long. A wide chassis does not allow for too much height and the center of gravity has to be watched closely. It has to be very low to the ground for it to be able to go over the bump. The long chassis allows more mobility in height. For this we took apart part of last year's robot to reuse the c-channels to build the chassis.

1/22/10

1/22/10 – Today, the physics group started coming up with ideas about the kicker design of the robot. Neil was primarily working with the kicking design. At the end of the meeting, he had a prototype design read to build tomorrow. Ram and other people who tried to help the programming team by putting the control board off the robot got in trouble. There was miscommunication between the mechanical and the programming team.

1/21/10

1/21/10 – The Mechanical team wanted the control board to be on the new robot so that the programming team is able to work with the new robot in Java. The mechanical team took off the C-RIO and the wireless connection. The programming team was working with Java to program the old robot to drive (last year they used C++). The physics group was trying to find the rotational energy and force required for the soccer ball to go over the bump. They figured out that rolling the ball over the bump was much easier than trying to kick the ball through it.

1/19/10

1/19/10 – Basic CAD model has been built. (Ram's built the model of all the places where the batteries, motors, and jaguars would go.) The model displayed the ball with the rollers and piston. The ramp was also built with the help of Ram, Eddy, Jason, and Matt.

1/16/10

1/16/10 – We worked on pneumatics and read through 2010 pneumatics manual. We calculated the Bore size. We worked on making the bield bump also. We cut the wood needed to near exact measurements, having a +1% error in our cutting. The CAD team worked on getting the pneumatics onto the robot in the CAD program. The programming team got the java program running and the robot was able to function properly.

1/15/10

1/15/10 - We finalized the design and got exact dimensions and gave it to the CAD team. Software got the old robot to move and do the basics with the mini PC and Java.

1/13/10

1/13/10 – We broke into groups: CAD, mechanical, and software. The mechanical group decided to combine two designs and decided to stick with the new design. The CAD group finished making the exact dimensions of the chassis. The software team got the Java to work with the robot. We voted on the T-shirt designs Jerril Varghese made and gave our opinions to better it.

1/12/10

1/12/10 – We broke up into groups : CAD, Mechanical, and software. The CAD group was working on the chassis design. They worked on re-designing the chassis given. Programming started working with the old robot, trying to get it to work with the mini pc. Programming also switched over to Java. The mechanical group decided on 3 major possibilities for the robot design. Shop-in-a-box was put on a halt after voting the on robot drawings that Nazmin created. Some of the members started working on the Physics aspect of the build. They measured the minimum velocity to get over the bump. They found the minimum velocity to be 1.6486m/s.

1/11/10

As we came in on Monday after school, the strategy group listed out the priorities for the design of the robot. These priorities were:


1. GET NO PENATLIES

2. Almost completely offensive robot

3. Accurate shooting/control of the ball (including having the ball go over the bump)

4. Speed and maneuverability.

5. Robot being able to go over the bump

6. Defense

7. Robot able to hold itself above the ground

Based on this we divided ourselves into these groups to brainstorm design ideas. At the end of the meeting, we told everyone what the plans were. These ideas would influence the basic design of our robot. The first group came up with the rollers that were at an angle to help the robot climb the bump. The second group came up with a basic design of the chassis and an arm to grab and hold on to the top of the tower. The last group had an idea of two rollers that would allow the control of the ball.

1/10/10

We divided ourselves into three groups. These were the strategy, mechanical, and CAD group. The strategy group was assigned to figure out how the competitions works out and come up with any strategy that would work. They found out how seeding points work and based their strategy on it. The CAD people started learning how to build the model. The mechanic group read the rules to know the constraints of their designs. At the end we had a group meeting to see how each group was doing. Mechanical people also looked at the kit of parts to see if any of the parts were missing.

THE BUILD SEASON HAS BEGUN!-1/09/10

1/09/10 – We all met outside the Robotix Room and watched a projection of the live NASA broadcast. Some members went to Northeastern to pick up the Kit of Parts and we started brainstorming a basic design and strategy for the game and robot.

Pre-Season

We started designing the storage crate and the shop in the box. We also had elections and chose our leaders


President – Neil Patel

Vice President – Yash Adhikari

Treasurer – Nazmin Khalifa

Safety Captain – Daniel Lee

Rules Captain – Gerard Pothier III



We also fund-raised with Knights of Columbus, PTC, and Mercury also donated money to our club.

Robonica came to us to introduce their new robots that can easily be used to compete. The second time they came, we had a competition amongst ourselves with their robots.