Today we met for a homework party…we learned about chemistry….and triangles…and calculus…then we had a delicious dinner and then some calibration. 
The important part of our calibrating is to make sure the robot camera and programming recognize the targets!
The next thing is to be sure that the ball sits well in the robot shooter….we’re getting good at setting up the shooter after all of this practice.
It’s also very important to have an expert button pusher running the controls.
We’ve been keeping a stats sheet to track our accuracy. It’s been pretty good, but more variable than we’d like it to be.
It was nice to have so many helping hands at the warehouse today. For the most part, everyone was very useful.
We'd like to help, but we're a little tied up right now.
K-Bots, we’re meeting all week from 4PM until 8PM at Transformix plant 2. Thanks so much to our parents for providing us with yummy dinners!
…eating snacks…
…and having fun…
…watching blue flashing LEDs
In between times while programming was happening, we played some games…
It’s nice to have tall ceilings and big open spaces to pass the ball around.
We even take a crack at shooting baskets from time to time. The robot is much more consistent at scoring than we are though!
We’re spending our time trouble-shooting and checking for leaks and making sure that everything is connected properly. 
It’s not always fun and games though–there’s always homework of one kind or another that needs to get done.
We competed in Toronto and then in Atlanta at the championships after winning the rookie all-star award.
Parents and students are excited to see our robot, and some are brave enough to try their hand at the controls.
Many thanks to our school for allowing us to demonstrate our robot at parent teacher nights each year!
…it’s so nice to lay down and relax….it’s almost like having a beach vacation!
We applied reflective tape to our third target, and our programmers got right to work implementing the changes to the vision algorithm…
…while our mechanical crew attached the shooter to the platform.
Spring is in the air….and pool noodles have hit the store shelves. We’re stocking up for spare bumper parts for St. Louis….but in the mean time, they’re pretty fun to play with. 
Tomorrow we’ll be doing a robot demo for parent-teacher interviews (K-Bots, please show up at 6PM to prepare). Friday we’ll be back at the warehouse 5PM-8PMish working on calibrating the shooter.
We have got some changes to make on our scouting sheets too–scouts, please give input on what would make the process more smooth in St. Louis.
After the presentation we had a break for cookies! Yummmmm
Then we started working on our very long “to-do” list–it’s hard to imagine all of the things that have to get done before the 24th.
One of the things to do is get robots ready for our parent-teacher night demonstrations. We’ve now got two robots up and running! We’re certainly going to make an impression on all of the parents.
Finally, at the end of our meeting we were excited to see the outcome of our vision processing party on Thursday. 
It turns out that we’re pretty good at counting pixels. Our data set was very well labeled and served as a great set of test images for various vision algorithms. We are now very optimistic about our auto-aiming, and looking forward to some quality time in the Transformix warehouse to calibrate everything.
We found corners, and counted pixels, and inserted data into a spreadsheet.
It’s not the most exciting or glamorous task to do…
…but when we’re working together it is a little bit more fun. Thanks K-Bots for coming together to get this big task accomplished in one day!
We had cake too! That helps make tedious tasks more fun.
When the image processing party was done, we continued to work on wiring for our shooter calibration.
And started to debug the programming for Kasey III-Barbra Streisand. We are looking forward to showing parents all about our robotics program at parent teacher interviews next week. 
K-Bots, enjoy your long weekend! We’ll meet again after school on Tuesday from 2:45-6:30PM. Come and see charts and graphs made from all of the image processing data!
Parent Teacher Interviews are coming up soon, and we love to show the KCVI parent community all the cool things our robots can do. Since our new robot is in a crate in St. Louis, we have to make sure that we have another robot that’s ready to go.
We had changed Kasey-III’s wheels earlier in build season to do some testing, so we needed to change back to mecanum wheels before we get it rolling again.
We had to make sure that all of the little rollers still rolled….
…and then we got the wheels back on in the right spots.
Part of the fun of robotics is getting to do homework on the whiteboard and working through problems with your friends. Sometimes this turns into a bit of a math competition on the board. It’s a good thing that we’re all friends here at K-Botics!
Today we got new tools! We’ll try not to lose them….
“I’m Wolverine!” -Duncan, Queen’s Mentor
After careful planning, purchasing, a few hand clamps, and a bit of giggling….
…everything was square and level, and attached to the robot cart.
Now we’re ready to roll! We’ll be calibrating our shooter again soon.
We’re getting really excited about going to St. Louis! We love spending time together as a team. 
There are some activities that we can participate in, please fill in the 
We moved all of our things back into our workspace. We’ve got the computers working again, and the locks are back on the closets. Things are slowly returning to normal. 
We were working with our CAD drawing to design a shooter stand that better simulates the real robot geometry for our calibration.
We’re also working on our electrical box. Knowledge is being transferred from veteran K-Bots to rookies with great enthusiasm.
We’re preparing for scouting at the championship level. This includes a primer on wheels and drive systems. Thanks to everyone who put in work to prepare these materials.
Kare-bots are still being made….
…and we received a great post card from India which told us of how much fun it is to give Kare-bots away!
Finally, today we celebrated Olivia’s birthday! She got good news today, she’ll be at KCVI next year in the I.B. program! We’re excited that she’ll be on our team for years to come.
