Back to the Old Plan

Since my last post a lot of things have happened, the most important being that we are back to building a 15 pound robot. The reason for this is that our design is extremely complicated and difficult not to mention dangerous. It is of the utmost importance that we first make it work on a smaller scale before moving up to the heavy weight class.

Luckily we are already builidng, all we are waiting for is the compiler necessary for programing our robot. We should be up an running pretty soon!

Another bit of interesting news is that our team as added two more people making a total of 7. One of those two is actually taking my place of driver seeing how she is incredibly awesome. At last year's competition she managed to rake in the most points in a single match even with a broken robot. And driving is basically as important as building.

Also, we have gotten our first sponsorship. Smoothie King as agreed to give us 20 percent of the profits on sales made on this coming wednesday. We are all very excited and hope to get enough money to cover some of your major expenses on the robot.

Big Changes All Around

Ok so first off, at the Bot Pop competition at the local science museum Batbot recently outfitted with razorblades and sharp scrap metal won two out of four matches. In the competitions we had to pop ten balloons of our assigned color and pop the white balloon attached to the back of the opponent's robot. It was double elimination and although we lost, we aren't discouraged because the two matches we lost, were very close just a balloon difference.

Now onto the big change. We are no longer doing a 15 pound robot. We are going for the heavy metal... 120 pounds of pure amazingness. As of now we are keeping the design we had for the smaller robot and just modifying it for a larger one. Our first move however is to network and find sponsors in order to pay for our expenses in actually building this monstrous robot.

Thirdly, one of team members resigned and two more have been added making a total of 5 members on the Mechanical Misfit team. More might be on the way but that depends on how well one of our fellow teams holds togther.

Exciting News!

Well first off, Batbot is going to be competing in a small competition in a local museum. We do however have to modify him so that he can pop ballons since that is the competition.
In any case the real news is that our final design for this year's fifteen pound robot is decided. Hopefully you can bear with me and understand that the actual design must be kept top secret for now but just be asured that it is very exciting.

Youtube

So soon if not later my team is hoping to start putting up youtube videos documenting our progress this year. We will include time lapse videos of our designs and building of the robot. As well as videos of the competition once the time comes. I'll give more information once we get that in order.

Robotics Camp

So this past week was spent teaching kids robotics. At my school volunteers would come and be couselors and teach the campers how to build a trebuchet (a catapult that works using counter wieghts and gravity) and also a robot that pops baloons. On Friday there was a small competition against the robots and my camper won. I mean the robot was a beast; it had spikes and used pneumatics to bring an arm down that would pop every balloon in its way.

Additionally in the afternoons after camp, we would help this group of kids that are part of a program for low income students. Another member of my team took place in this but more invovled with the afternoon program. All in all it was a fun week and the students were all very nice so it was a good experience. Also, being able to teach other people engineering skills is really important.

Next Steps

Our goal is to compete in the 15 pound battle competition in 2010. This is just a glimpse of what the battle bots can do:




This is a saw pinned against a spinner robot.

The Trip

We arrived Monday, April 20th on my birthday in hot San Francisco, prepared for cold weather mind you; luckily it cooled down a couple days later. Anyhow, after signing in, doing some sightseeing and a couple intense card games we got down to business because the competition was soon to start.

Mare Island, an old abandoned naval base (the “Mythbusters” have held some of their experiments here), is where the competition took place. All around people were preparing, tweaking their bots here and there, and just buzzing with excitement. Camera crews were there to document the event which was to premier on a show somewhere around November. Although most of the coverage went to the 120 and 220 pound robots they definitely captured the spirit of the whole event. It was kids ranging from all ages exhibiting their skills in an exciting way.

Now, onto the actual competitions.

The task oriented completion in which our Bat Bot competed was not the most exciting of the events but the main idea was to show us the principle skills of robotics. The teams competed with driver controlling the robot with a remote, a coach who told the driver what to do and, a human player who could pick up and load ping pong balls onto the robot, and shoot any available balls into the basket at the last ten seconds of the match. I was the driver for my team, and let me tell you it is stressful because you might have a real top notch robot, but if you can’t drive it the robot is useless.

The crowd favorite seemed to be Rolie Polie Olie team because it was a really cute robot even though wasn’t the most effective one. It looked like an upside down metal bowl painted yellow with red arms that would essentially hug the ping pong balls and then bring them to the human players. If you’ve ever seen the cartoon from Playhouse Disney, let me tell you this robot was a splitting image.

Next comes the 15 pound battles. The main robots seen here are wedges, plows, drums, saws, and spinners. Wedges and plows work in the same way in that they have a piece of the robot that is flat to the ground that can get under other robots and flip them over. Drums and saws are attached weapons that spin at high velocity; they can move vertically or horizontally and create internal damage to robots as well as flipping them very high into the air in some cases with the vertical ones. Lastly, spinning robots are like metal spinning cakes with spikes and other accessories that spin at high speeds and send robots flying all over the place. Robots with hammers are not seen often because they are not very efficient.

The 120 and 220 pound matches were held in the same arena equipped with immense hammers on each corner that make deafening booms when they hit the ground. Also saws pop up at different of the arena floor and revolving saws lie on each side of the arena. These matches were the most watched and most fascinating and for good reason. The best match was a pink spinner against a wedge. The team Fuchsia Fusion, a senior team from my school, tore apart the wedge in two seconds flat. Boom! One panel flew off and hit the opposite wall. Boom! There went another. By the time the opposing team tapped out all that was left was the metal frame and the wires. It’s easy to say they were annihilated, and not to mention the team that was beat was a huge all guy team that lost to a three girl team.

The Results

We came in fourth place nationally in our division and came in second for documentation a seemingly small but huge part of the competition. We received an award that was made up of a broken saw piece and to my team seemed beautiful in all its grunginess. My school also placed first and second in my division and ranked highly in others. All in all, the reputation of my school was maintained and we had fun so the trip was a success as was the experience.