Design & Build by David C.
Tuesday – The design team was still busy contemplating different robot designs, so the build team set out to create the many field parts for this year’s game. The team put together the barrier that crosses the center of the field. It was the first official day of build, so everyone was getting used to the long hours of work and the familiar scent of sawdust.
Thursday – The design team worked through concepts for a ball pick-up system, drive system, and a ball shooter based on the initial brainstorming sessions. The build team continued to work on the field parts. Several of the rookies helped the build coach, Mr. Trageser, affectionately known as Mr. Trag, build the frame to hold the backboards, while a smaller group created the basketball boards and hoops. Currently, the build team is working on a way to make the hoops more modular to conserve space.
Friday – The design team, tested a prototype shooter, in the school’s auditorium using the goals constructed by the build team. As the field parts and robot prototypes begin to take shape, the reality of the projects are starting to form in the team members’ minds.
Saturday – A handful of build team members arrived early in the morning to continue work on the bridge to make it sturdier. After this was done, the team performed various tests, using robots from the previous years. The team could see exactly what kind of challenge balancing robots on this bridge will present.
Programming & Electrical by James D.
This week, the programming team primarily set up for being able to program the robot this season. We began working on a few formulas to help with locating the backboard and rotating towards it during autonomous mode. Our main focus for these formulas is to:
- Identify the optimum angle of trajectory
- Identify the optimum velocity
- Develop analysis techniques that allow the computer to comprehend where the backboard is in relation to the robot and to modify direction accordingly
On Thursday, we helped Mr. Ostrow connect the 2010 robot to a laptop and the driver station so we could program functions and test preliminary movements without the robot actually being completed. It was not easy to keep a wireless connection and after a good hour of working on the problem, we had to save this job for another day.
CAD & Preliminary Design by Kirk B. & Pranav K.
The CAD Team worked on worked on various ideas for drive trains and other prototypes for the 2012 robot. We were responsible for converting the team’s drawings and sketches into CAD. Even though most of our computers do not support the programs we need, we made significant progress working solely from three computers.
On Tuesday, the CAD Team assisted the Design team by creating models of their sketches and more abstract ideas. Thanks to Autodesk Inventor’s simulation ability, we were able to analyze the potential of numerous design concepts.
For Thursday, our CAD coach, Brian Sherman, gave us directions to convert our team’s refined prototype into a working Inventor model. While some of our members worked to fulfill this task, the remaining members refined our documentation system and to ensured that all models were up-to-date.
On Friday, we successfully identified parts in our repository that lacked histories and proceeded to recreate them. Ultimately, we managed to create a prototype for an eight-wheel Tank Drive-Train attached to a basic base frame.
On Saturday, the CAD team worked to create an updated prototype model. We also worked on turning robot model’s belly pan into a basic electrical board model. This season, we seek to create our best CAD model to date.
Animation by David S.
After the release of the Autodesk 3D Animation Task on Thursday, the animation team brainstormed various ideas for this year’s topic. The challenge is to create an animation that outlines how an alien race, the iiko, can help our society improve its educational infrastructure. To begin with, we spent a great deal of time identifying aspects of our educational system that we would like to change for the better. In our next step we came up with creative ways that the iiko would be responsible for alleviating our problems.
This proved to be more difficult than expected, for we all had different ideas and expectations. Once we finally decided on a specific idea, we set to work. By the end of next week, we should be done with the storyboarding and have started animating.
Business by Allison P. & Susan N.
This week, the Business Team worked on creating the content for our biweekly newsletter. We interviewed the various project teams, obtained images relative to what we seek to portray, and completed describing this year’s game, Rebound Rumble.
Our newsletter is a fairly new project and for this season, we hope to work on redesigning and develop it further. This includes creating a template that will hopefully be used for the next few years.
We are also in the process of reviewing the 2011 Business Plan. We targeting areas that need to be updated or redesigned. Overall, this has been a nice week for the Business Team. Although we do not have many members in this team, we have been able to make a lot of progress. In the upcoming weeks, we will make a final template for the newsletter and work on the 2012 Business Plan.
Media by Danielle G. and Patrick W.
This week was very exciting for the whole team because we got to see the game and plan for the 2012 robot. The game is very challenging and the whole team has thought of ways to overcome these obstacles and succeed. On Sunday, after Kick-Off, the team met to brainstorm. The media team both filmed and photographed this meeting. Mainly, the media team focused on filming the session which used students acting as robots. This helped all members of the team to really get a feel for the game. Using a lunch table for a bumper and buckets for baskets, 341 figured out strategies for assessing the new game. The media team captured these moments for future viewing by the team.
Later in the week, the members of the media team thought out their plans for this season. Kirsten and Scott, our media coaches, helped us map out the upcoming events and goals. The media team then chose leaders for each activity and thought out ideas for the 2012 Vlog. The Vlog, video blog, will be made each week of build season. Each week, we plan to show what every part of the team is working on. In the previous year, we mainly focused on the mechanical progress of our robot, but this year we want to also include CAD, design, and electrical into the mix. Aside from the Vlog, we plan to make a Fall Recap video and a update our Flickr with pictures from the recent events we have attended.
All in all, it has been a great first week of build season. We have had some problems and hiccups, but as always we problem solve and come out ahead. If the next five weeks go as well as this one did, we are going to have an amazing season!
Website by Emily O.
This week marks the first of many updates to the team website, www.team341.com for this season. We focused mainly on adding a few pages and bug fixes rather than re-designing. All of the albums from our Flickr are now updated on to the media page of our website. We already have two photo albums for 2012 on our media page, so check out what our team has been doing. A few other pages have been updated as well; our coach Kirsten is now officially married to Scott!
This week encompassed minor tasks, but the media team has an aggressive schedule planned for the upcoming season. Our team leaders for each project group will be blogging about their progress each week for the Team News page on our web site. Additionally, we plan to add all of our CAD models from previous years, redesign our navigation menu, and add pictures of our awards to add more interest to our awards page.
Most exciting, however, is our plan to create a new website dedicated to Team in a Box. This website will host most of our videos offered on our disc in order to increase the availability of our videos to new teams. We would also like to make this more of a collaborative effort and would welcome other team submissions to our project. If you love the disc, however, don’t worry. We will still keep the basic videos on the DVD to be sent out as a secondary resource for all who request it. We plan for updates, new pages and resources, and an entirely new website; the two student media team is up for the challenge!
