Overview of Fall Training

In November and December, students in grades 7-12 from throughout Middle Tennessee came to TSU to study robotics. Students spent their Saturday mornings learning about engineering, technology, computer programming, and more. This was to prepare for the very exciting FIRST Robotics challenge to be released in January 2007. Click the link below to watch video of the students working and continue reading below for details on each Saturday's activities

Watch Video of Training

End Training & Prepare for January!

• students created personal webpages with descriptions of themselves for the team blog
• students completed evaluations on the training camp
• students, parents, and mentors broke into their divisions to discuss their duties when the challenge was released -
• Engineering division created a design team, build team, and programming team
• Marketing division will go to work on team name, logo, and pit layout
• Media division made plans to create this blog and link to student webpages
• Management division compiled students registations, made a parent list of volunteers, and became familiar with the FIRST manual
• Parents signed up to provide meals, snacks, and build the crate and practice field
  

Redesigned Robot Soccer!

This week we spent the first half finishing the robots, then played another round of games. Some of the robots need further redesigning, since they didn't work as well as anticipated. Each team carried their team spirit on signs and with cheers during the games!

To wrap up this week, we thought about which roles we would like to have on this year's EOT Robotics Team 1890 - and which ones we wouldn't want. We talked about the time schedules, when we would be working as a team, and plans for attending the regional competition. Next week is the Commencement for our Fall Training session - then we're just waiting for the Kickoff in January!

Second Soccer Challenge!

For our Second Soccer Challenge, our instructions were to make a SoccerBot that contained a working motor in addition to the motors that moved the wheels. Our mentors also switched groups - but the team members stayed in the same groups with their robots. We started the day with a whole group discussion about each team's robot - what worked well, what didn't work, and what needs redsigned. We then broke into groups and began redesigning the robots. Some teams kept the Squarebot frame and modified only the wheels and axles. Other teams decided to use a different, rectangular base. Each team had a different approach to how the additional motor should be used. All of the teams used the motor to trap the ball in some way, though.

We had so much fun redsigning the robots that we didn't get to play soccer this session - we'll finish up our robots this session and the beginning of the next, then play next week!

First Soccer Competition!

Today we played soccer for the first time - each team had a different approach to the game. Since we finished building the robots in the first hour of the session, we each had time to customize our Soccerbot and have a few practice times before the matches. Some teams used wheels that provided better traction and designed a heavier robot. Others changed gear ratios and experimented with 2 wheel drive instead of the 4 wheel drive they had built with the SquareBot. One team (veterans from last year's FRC team) built a device to 'trap' the ball on the front of their robot, although it didn't work as well as planned. We played games on a homemade indoor soccer field with two robots on a team for each game, rotating teams each game. Some of the robot 'drivers' had more experience with remote-controlled cars, so their robots were more agile at the start. B the end of the games, though, several people had been 'driving' and had a lot more experience - making the games quite competitive. The media person for each team was responsible for making signs for the team, devising a team name, and scheduling practice times - so we had a lot of team spirit from each team! On a design note, the bumper switches for each team's robot became a non-issue because of each team's designs - during the games only one bumper switch deactivated a robot temporarily, and that was because the driver backed up into the goal and barely hit the switch. :)

Next week we'll move on to a different soccer-based challenge and change teams a bit, but still using the Vex robotics platform.

First Vex Soccer Challenge!

Today's challenge started with breaking into 5 groups, each with a mentor and 4 team members. The challenge was to build the Vex Squarebot - but we had to use the two bumper switches on the robot's front or back. The bumper switches, when hit, disable the robot for 2 seconds. Each team figured out a different way to keep the bumper switches from being activated - without directly blocking the switch itself. We thought we would have enough time to build our SoccerBots and play a few games with them this session, but the building process took longer than anticipated - so we'll play soccer the next time we meet!

Review Day - Lego MindStorms

Today we took an opportunity to review robotics principles (especially programming) with our rookie members by exploring Lego MindStorms. We made simple car-like robots but then programmed them to do all sorts of cool things. We're really excited about moving on to metal-based robots next week with Vex!