Tag Archives: construction

Day 7: Field Completion

Day 7:  Progress is coming along in almost all our super-special-awesome mini-projects, especially the knitting.

knitting

Some people are brainstorming

brainstorm

we have a couple people building a test chassis, for testing our maneuverability on the field.test chassis

Our field building is nearing completion! fieldToday we got the bridge done

triumph

and had a minor debate on whether the note written on them said “No humans on bridge” or “No, humans on bridge”

balance

note: be careful to keep fingers and feet clear of the bridge!

It’s ok ’cause our status as human might be debatable!  We worked hard to reinforce the bridge so we can try to put several robots on it in the future.

woodshop

After the bridge was completed, we got to work cutting wood for the fenders.  Thanks Mr. Firth for helping us out in the shop tonight!

fender

For snack today we had delicious cookies!

cookies

In the back of our work space,  we got to have a little class on the function of sensors…sensors

…which led us to looking at the math associated with sensors.

sensors

We had a delicious dinner tonight provided by our very supportive team parents

dinner

tweedles

Tweedle dinner time{but which is which?}

After dinner we made great headway on the CAD for our drive train.  We are working as a group, putting the CAD together on the big screen.  It is really interesting to see the process unfold, and to understand the logic behind creating the robot design.

group cad

While work was taking place, some of us worked on organizing the workroom.  We are going to have a renovation soon, and we’d like to start keeping our files organized, both to save time, and to keep things neat.

organization

Throughout the evening, from time to time we were serenaded by violin music.

violin violin

At other times, people got a bit silly….

minitweedle

friendly strangulation seems to be the norm around here.

remember last year?tweedleWe build Saturday from 10AM-6PM.

Day 4: Prototype testing and decision making

Work started today at lunch time for some!  Our goal of getting a prototype robot to traverse the barrier had a deadline of 6PM, and we were determined to make that happen.

lunch time

After school, we got some more wood for our field construction team…..

lumber

…we’ve made great headway on backboards and are ready to assemble a barrier and bridge over the next few days.  Our goal is to have essential field pieces built soon so we can begin to test robot designs on them.field

Measure twice and cut once!  We’ve been doing a pretty careful job so far.

cad

Our CAD enthusiasts have completed the CAD of the field today!  We’re going to have so many more CAD jobs in the next week.  We will be preparing technical drawings of our final robot design and parts for fabrication.

test chassis

After a few hours of work this afternoon our simple chassis was driving.  Testing a chassis alone was not enough though.  We were curious about weight distribution and how tippy our robot might be.  test chassisWe decided to suspend a weight from a meter above our robot to mimic anything we might build up there, and then give it a try.  We installed plywood chain guards to keep us all safe.

“We’re prototyping, and it’s a bit sketchy as usual” -Raymond, grade 11

demolished

After ramming our test robot into a few barriers to test how it tipped, it was looking a little worse for wear.

“The past 20 minutes completely trump all of my experiences in grade 7 and 8.” -Olivia, grade 8.a real thinker

Back to the drawing board we go….

drawing board

By the end of our meeting today we have made progress in deciding the key configuration of our robot.  Now begins the fun of designing the details.  You never know where ideas come from.  We prototype and experiment with some interesting and unconventional materials.

ideas

We had the first meeting of the Chairman’s video team.  We’re starting earlier this year to make sure that we get the footage that we need without a feeling of panic!

video meeting

We have started several top secret knitting projects this build season.  They include a lot of creative design, and incorporating technology in unconventional ways.

knittingSome of us spent a great deal of time doing calculations, doing research and gathering our materials.

ball winder

"Didn't we design a better way to do this last year?"

We taught a few new members how to knit today.  When they were upset about making mistakes Paige had some good advice.  We think it applies to building robots too!

“You learn more sometimes from failing, than you do from doing things right” -Paige, grade 10

Every day we work hard to balance homework and robotics.  Sometimes that is best done alone…

homework

…other times we gather to have group physics parties!

homework

Tomorrow we meet from 2:45-10PM.  Dinner is provided.  See everyone there!

 

Day 3: Learning All Sorts of New Skills

Day 3:  We have a new system this year to keep ourselves organized!  This year we scan our finger prints when we enter and leave the lab to track the time that we’ve been working here.

finger print scanThen we use our organizational chart to divide ourselves up into several groups. We have a timeline of season goals, along with weekly goals and daily tasks on our blackboard.  Each student and mentor have their name on a magnet, and choose their tasks for the session.

organizationalOur field building crew worked really hard to get the backboards complete, including the proper coloured tape. backboard Today we completed the middle level backboards.  We can’t wait for the hoops to be delivered.

building

While working to construct something so large, we learned quickly the hazard of structures that are at eye level.  We’ve flagged them with vivid colours of painters tape to keep ourselves safe.

hazard tape

We love showing our school what we’re up to.  We have decorated the display case outside the main office to show our spirit and theme for the season.  We hope to inspire more participation both this year and for years to come.

display

Our programmers learned the basics of the standard FIRST code today.  We broke down different parts of it to learn what they do.

programming

We discussed the priorities for our robot, and have had many interesting ideas about how to tackle the end-game balancing.  We’re thinking outside the box to imagine how to balance three robots on the bridge.  To help with visualizing the geometry, we used a scale model of paper robots on our whiteboard.

whiteboardTo test some of our ideas, we tried to use our robot from 2010.

testing

Later we started building another test chassis.  working hardWe’ll know a lot more about how to approach our design dilemma when we can see a robot moving over a barrier and onto a bridge.  Programmers are keen to get their hands on the test chassis too.  We like to multitask in a productive way.

dinner

For dinner we were treated to a delicious dinner of Indian food.  We are thankful to our supportive parents who are also REALLY good cooks.  Some of our K-Bots learned how to wash dishes today. 

“Robots aren’t the only thing we learn about around here”-Harry, grade 9

dishes

Today was a special day for one of our founding K-Bots, and current mentor, Opti.  We sang Happy Birthday, and presented her with her very own birthday cupcake, and tiara.

opti

Nothing is more important than knowing the rules to the game.  To ensure that everyone takes rule-learning seriously, we had a pop quiz today–high scorers earned cupcakes.  quizK-Bots, beware…..more pop quizzes are in your future.  Please learn the rules.

In case parents are wondering….we have done LOTS of homework today too!

homework

homework

Day 2: In Which We Get Organized

Our group was hard at work bright and early today!  We have so many things to accomplish, and so little time, we need to make each day count.  The big group got broken down into smaller groups to start tackling our immediate goals of the day.

We started the day by doing lots of talking and planning; devising a plan of attack is a great way to start the build season.

chairman's

Our Chairman’s group has been working hard for a long time.  We’re now consolidating everything….and keeping a close eye on the mid-Feb. deadline!

programming group

Our keen programmers, and programmers-to-be, got to work.  This year we’re starting early, and starting from scratch with our programming.  It’s great to see so many students eager to sink their teeth into the code!

success!

A little later in the day, the programmers were thrilled to announce the success of their code that they wrote themselves!  We’re looking forward to learning lots more over the next few days.

mechanical

It was full steam ahead on the mechanical team until we read the bumper rules once more.  Teams: READ THE BUMPER RULES!!  We’re generating interesting ideas, and identifying challenges, and discussing how to solve our problems.  Eventually we needed a full group meeting to rank priorities of what we want our robot to do.  discussions

Part of our goal is to CAD things thoroughly this year to make sure everything fits together well.  We made a CAD drawing of the field today.

CAD

In our down time we knocked off a few thank you cards for meals and favours received in the past week.  We are so grateful to the support of our families and our school.

thankyou

At lunch time some of us ate sandwiches….lunch

…others ate potluck leftovers….and others ate some yummy chili.  We are so thankful to the families that provide food for us during our long build season days!

lunch

Discussions never stop.  We’re always working on robot building strategy, even while eating!

Today, some of us focused on building components of the field.  We need field pieces so we can test robot designs and sensors.  We followed the technical drawings, and worked hard…measuring….measuring….measuring…

field

…and finally cutting out the pieces.

field

By the end of the day we had build a rather impressive structure!fieldIt’s nice to see things coming together so quickly!  We look forward to making more progress on the field pieces tomorrow too.

Haotian

We were excited to have a K-Botics alumni visit today!  We could legitimately ask almost everyone in the room…”Have you met Haotian?”

K-Bots: Tomorrow we’re meeting after school until 10:00PM.  Dinner will be provided.  Bring snacks, and be sure to take time out to do your homework (maybe do it at lunch!)

A Long Day

After school some of us started preparing for our fundraiser in the evening…we sharpened almost 200 pencils!

sharpening

Others picked up the water-jet pieces that we’re using for St. Louis.  It’s fun to get new parts back from the shop.

waterjet

We took our time with the deburring, making sure not to leave any sharp edges.

deburring

Others got to work on M.E.L.  She got a makeover today–braces removed….MEL

…and a fresh coat of paint.  She’s looking pretty good!MEL  At 6:00PM we were excited to see so many people arriving to take part in our fundraising test.  We had 52 people in attendance, which gets us approximately $1500 more for our trip to the Championships.  Parents, friends, high school students from our school and others, recent graduates, Queen’s students, teachers, nurses, and even some Cyberfalcon mentors!TEST

The test was long, and had lots of math.  Even after they finished, mentors kept discussing how to properly solve some of the questions!TEST

Our mentor Alex said of the test “This was generally less pleasant than my calculus exam earlier today.”

Frosh

Poor guy, he went from one exam to another!  Thanks for all the help everyone.  Thanks to those who wrote, and to those who organized the evening.

M.E.L.’s Growing Up

From CAD to drawings, from cutting pieces to painting, we’ve watched M.E.L. grow up a lot over the past week.

precision work

After some careful work, made easier with an assembly jig, M.E.L. took shape…piece by piece…

growing

By mid-day she was almost fully assembled.

braces

With the help of the “Queen of the Table Saw”, M.E.L. was fitted with braces in the afternoon.

queen of the table saw

When the braces come off, she’ll be the prettiest Mobile Electric Loader around!

bracesIn other news: we’re in the NEWTON division for Championships, so scouting can begin again!  We’re excited to be playing with so many famous teams.  It will be a great opportunity to learn from them, and watch them in action on the field.

A Second Coat of Victory

We worked hard to get all of the wood cut for our fantastic purple battery box today.  Thanks so much to the woodshop teachers who let us use their tools.

woodshop

We’ve assembled quite a painting crew who painted another coat of purple on all of the shelves.

painting

We’re looking forward to assembling everything on Saturday morning.  Until then, we’ll be painting!

Recognition

props

K-Botics got recognized in the school Recognition Assembly today!  It was fun to get up on stage and share our successes with the school.  We are showcased alongside sports teams, the school band, and the student council.  It takes a lot of organization to get such a big group of K-Bots to wear their purple shirts today….and to line up in the hallway…

organization

We’ve got some great leaders amongst us!

recognition

We showed a video of our robot in action at competition.

After school we set to work on our new pit equipment.  Our new battery carrier is going to be spectacular.  Tomorrow we’re going to paint it with “Victory Purple”!

preparation

As always, our minibot and deployment design group are hard at work.  We look forward to seeing their new ideas being built and tested.  Until then it is shrouded in secrecy.

CAD

 

Up The Pole In Under 2 Seconds

shirts

Our shirts have come in!  They are a new design from last year and we think they’re pretty neat!  We’ll stand out in the crowd for sure.

success!

1.5 seconds

We’re going to stand out for our awesome minibot too.  It went up the pole SO fast!

We packed up everything today after school.  Look at all those batteries charged and ready to go!

packing

Our minibot tool box has mini-deodorant…just in case.

minibot

Since all our tools were packed away, and our pit was bare we took the opportunity to practice setting it up once more.

pit practice

Look at that, it fits perfectly in the hallway!  We’re trained and ready now for the pits at the Javits Convention Center.

pit practice

It was a wonderful treat to be surprised with pizza today!  We love our big purple family–everyone looks after each other so well.

pizza

A big thank you to everyone for being so efficient today.  We got many details sorted out, and all the mentors worked very hard behind the scenes to tie up the loose ends associated with our trip to New York.  We’re thankful to our big purple family for helping out so graciously when times are stressful.  What would we do without you all.  These certainly are big shoes to fill!!

feet up

After a busy day, sometimes it is important to take a time out and put your feet up…

feet up

…of course, some of our mentors take everything to an extreme.

We’ll be blogging from New York when internet is available. We’re sightseeing Thursday afternoon.  The competition starts on Friday with robot inspection and practice matches.  Saturday is the start of round robin play and Sunday is alliance selection and the finals.

Stay tuned for information about webcasts.

Match results should be posted here, or here.

Dragons, Oh My!

Only a few days after build season, we’re hard at work again! Today, some K-bots got together at a top-secret location to work on our challenge that we are putting together for a practice Lego Robotics Competition. We’ll be helping one of our local elementary schools host the practice competition this Thursday.

Dragon for our Medieval Theme

We have been having lots of fun designing a challenge that is medieval themed!

Duct Tape Solves everything!

After some design changes to make sure that our challenges will fit into our space constraints (our challenge boards have to fit into the back of a parent volunteer’s car!), we were eager to start building! As always, we discovered that duct tape can solve almost anything!

Marbl;es for the challenge

Some of us have been working very hard over the last few days to find some materials that we can use to make our challenge more interesting- we’ve been sorting through not only our tool boxes but also our old toys!

Textured Surface for the challenge

We are including lots of different elements in our challenge… we might be including anything from textured surfaces…

Black Tape for Line Following

To black tape for line following…

Yarn for challenge!

And, of course, we knitters can use yarn for almost anything!

But we can’t tell you exactly what the challenge is yet, because some of our younger LEGO Robotics friends might be reading our blog, and it’s a surprise!

We’re so excited to see what the elementary school students come up with at the on Thursday! It will be fun to see how the different teams come up with different ways to complete our challenges.  We hope to inspire many teams to learn more LEGO robotics skills, and to form FLL teams for the upcoming year.