After a long night with Relay For Life, a few of us brought our robot and gear to Queen’s University for the Science Rendezvous.
Robot transportation is sometimes difficult, but today it was pretty simple. We are very glad that Queen’s is close by, and that the sun was shining! 
We were excited to be a part of the Science Rendezvous, an event that brings together many different community groups to show demonstrations of different kinds of science.
We got our display set up…ready for the event to begin at 10AM.
At the event, there were many different booths to explore. We had fun learning about different aspects of science…
There were many different people presenting their work. There were professors, and grad students, high school students, and even elementary student science fair winners. These two girls made robots out of toothbrushes!
photo posted with permission
Here’s the robot in action.
The Human Mobility Research Center showed how computer assisted surgery works…programming and cameras seem to be everywhere!
Our display was a big hit with all ages. From young drivers….
…to parents, everyone was interested in our program and how we were able to create this robot in 6 weeks.
We are glad of the opportunity to demonstrate our robot at this event. Many thanks to the organizers of the Science Rendezvous. We hope to participate for years to come.
When the cue was aimed, the cameras picked up the angle, and projected where the cue ball would travel, and where the other ball would go after impact.
It was fun to try our hand at pool. We realized that some of us were pretty good! The tracer lines helped some of us a lot.
Thanks to the Queen’s students for inviting us back again. Although watching calibration was interesting, playing the A.R. Pool was much more fun. Good luck as you take this demo on the road–we’re sure it will be a big hit!
This is a project being worked on by one of our mentors who helped with programming and vision code this past season. He wanted to show us that some of the same techniques that our team used are being used by researchers in computer vision in other areas too.
We had a brief tour of the ILC, and learned about what goes on in the building. Many of us have been there before for Science Quest, or for our FLL practice tournament a few years ago. There is usually NOT a big tent set up in the computer area though. This is a special demo set up for A.R. Pool.
It needs to be under a tent to control the lighting on the pool table. There are cameras and a projector involved in the game, so lighting is very important. The cameras are supposed to detect where the balls are, and where the cue is, and the projector will then trace lines showing where the balls will travel after they are hit at a specific angle.
Unfortunately, when we arrived for our tour and demo, there were a few technical issues. The camera settings were off….
…so those got changed….
…and then the lengthy calibration process had to happen.
We know all about calibration. It is such an important step in making any system function well. We had days of calibration in the warehouse before our robot was shooting well.
Thanks to our mentors and parents for driving. Thanks to Petey, a founding mentor of our team, for donating many years worth of bottles!
Parents worked hard, loading and unloading cases into their cars and doing the returns.
Kids worked hard collecting, sorting and crushing cans.
We ended up making over $600 on the day. Thanks to all who helped out! Feel free to collect more bottles, return them, and give us the money. This bottle drive never ends.
Today’s plan was focused on fundraising. We know that after St. Patrick’s day and the Iron Ring ceremony there are lots of bottles around Queen’s University campus. We had put up flyers, and despite the collection another group did the day before, were impressed with the quantity that was left for us to gather.
We are getting very good at sorting the glass and crushing the cans.
Some of us have now got drivers licenses, and can help with the collection on the streets, and the drop off to the beer store.
Did you know that a full pickup truck brings in about $100 in bottle money?
We found all sorts of bottles in the mix. This is the biggest bottle, being held by our smallest K-Bots!
Some cans even came with straws!
We arrived to the competition and took our place in line behind our friends 1114, 2056 and 610. Team 188 followed quickly behind us, and together we ensured that today the mad rush was a little less pushy.
Everyone is so excited to get started in the morning….some of our grade 9 students were quite surprised to be waking up before 6AM on a weekend morning while on a school trip!
And while competition continued on the field, repairs (both small and large) happened in the pit. 
Our matches this morning were not as successful as most of the ones yesterday. We ended the qualification rounds with a 5-3-1 record, and in 16th place at the start of alliance selection.
We worked out a strategy with our alliance partners and developed a game plan over lunch.
During the elimination rounds the game plan changes from earning coopertition points using the middle bridge with your opposing alliance member to earning extra points for getting an entire alliance onto the bridge. 3 robots on the bridge barely fit, but we saw it a few times. Here’s team 1075, team 548 and team 4307 with a triple balance in the quarter finals…
….and here’s our friends team 610, team 188 and team 3360 who balanced like this for much of the afternoon!
We were not so lucky with our end game balancing act. We could usually get 2 robots on, but this time, the clock stopped with our partner half off. We were eliminated in quarter final play.
Our team continued to watch the rest of the drama unfold as the semis and finals progressed. 
Part of our team returned to the pit to clean up and pack all of our belongings. When in the pit, we’re super safe. Here’s Michelle, dressed in her purple, wearing her proper safety attire!
We’d like to thank our sponsors for all that they’ve done for us, and all of the support that they gave leading up to the competition. We would not be here without the financial backing, the material donations and the time and energy spent making our team what it is.
As we were cleaning up our pit area we got to know some new friends from team 2056. It’s a small world when we realize that our purple and blue families intersect with the Cyberfalcons! FIRST is great for joining individual teams together as families, and creating networks of teams among communities. 
Even though we were eliminated from play, we continued to dance up a storm!
We danced in the stands…and we danced on the sidelines with a few other teams. 
We watched as the finals progressed….it was a grudge match between an alliance of 1114 and 2056 facing an alliance of 610 and 188. We know these teams well–we meet them in line for the doors to open each morning! Some of our mentors were once part of these teams, and we cheer them on and watch in awe at the things their robots can do.
At the end of the competition, awards are given out to many teams. Many teams qualified to go to championships from this regional. Many congratulations and standing ovations were given to the following:
“The Engineering Inspiration Award celebrates a team’s outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering and engineers, both within their school and their community. Criteria include: the extent and inventiveness of the team’s efforts to recruit students to engineering, the extent and effectiveness of the team’s community outreach efforts, and the measurable success of those efforts. This is the second highest team award FIRST bestows.
After school many parents volunteered to drive us to Transformix Engineering where we ate snacks and did homework….
…and worked on programming the robot….
…and finishing up the wiring.
Thanks so much to Transformix for letting us use their space for the weekend and letting us bag and tag tonight. We’re making ourselves at home! There are Queen’s jackets everywhere!
We had a few visitors come to see the last exciting moments where our robot was driving around and shooting baskets. It’s really thrilling to see everything come together at the last minute and work like it was supposed to!
Chris, from FESTO, was excited to see the pneumatic components in action. He’s arranging FESTO giveaways for competition this season.
We also had our follow-up with CKWS TV. It was exciting to have media present for the final moments of our build. Bag and Tag was officially documented this year, and a two part series about our team will air Monday and Tuesday at the 6pm news on CKWS.
One minor hiccup that we had to negotiate before bagging the robot was our bumper design. After recent clarification our original split number bumper was deemed to be against the rules. We quickly made some patches to sew on. 
There were still plenty of people taking naps on the sidelines…It will take time to regain all of the lost sleep from recent days.
With 30 minutes to go, we separated our shooting device from the robot to hold back and work on over the next little while. Thank goodness for a withholding allowance!
There was great hustle near the robot, and also in the Transformix lunch room. We cleaned up all of our dishes and food and prepared for the excitement of putting the robot into the bag.
But first…we needed to weigh our robot. Using the bathroom scales gave us one estimate…
…Transformix’s industrial scale gave us another….
With a 20 pound shooter, we’re under weight! 
We gathered at 11:50 to bag our robot. Everyone wanted to be a part of the momentous occasion.
It’s all caught on film!
With a sigh of relief and a few cheers we were done, with a few minutes to spare!
It’s a strange feeling to be done building. We’re used to seeing each other every day, and now we’ll take a day to rest and recover before we start thinking of all that remains to be completed before going to competition. 
We’ll miss each other in the mean time though! Good work everyone. Thanks to all of our families and supporters for helping us through an intense 6 weeks. Enjoy your rest.
Others worked on soldering components onto the new circuit boards that came in the mail from our sponsor 
We’re excited to have our name on our circuit boards!
On the other side of the room, we knitted away on our top secret knitting project. Little by little, it is growing, thanks to the efforts of many knitters!
More machining was done today at Queen’s University. We’re thankful to Queen’s for helping us get all of our machining done in such a short time.
Of course, when we have new parts, there’s going to be a lot of filing. Some of us are experts at filing!
We cut pieces today for welding projects tomorrow. It takes a lot of planning to have everything done on time to be put together.
All systems are important. We don’t want to forget pneumatics! We’re investigating what parts we have, and what parts we need.
To help with our research, we examined the pneumatics from last year’s robot.
Despite the long hours and the chaos of week 5, we’re still smiling!It’s Remi’s birthday. He’s smiling too!
Our orders have been coming in so we’re unpacking boxes, and moving forward with our plans. The biggest excitement came when boxes of electrical components were unpacked.
In other great news, we got some machining done today! Thanks to our Queen’s mentors who spent lots of time in the shop and accomplished so much.
When the pieces came back to our work room, we deburred…
There’s more machining to come in the next few days. Here’s another cool part that we’re using for our robot. 
Does anyone know what it is?
“The muffins are SO DELICIOUS!” -Liam, grade 9
After snack time we got back to work putting together the wheel assemblies for our robot. Working together is always more fun!
We got to work on our top secret project
A few snips later and it looked like this.
Some more secret business involves our strategy for flipping the bridge down. We’ve been working for a few days to develop a good idea. Today we moved our sketches onto CAD.
Some shenanigans took place repeatedly today. Over the course of the evening almost everyone ended up trapped at one time or another. Here’s proof that even a Tweedle can get caught! Despite being caught, the Tweedle is still smiling!
Part way through our work session today we took a time out to learn about talking with the public, particularly to judges and to the media. We are lucky that CKWS TV, our local TV station is interested in following us through build season, checking in from time to time, watching our robot grow and develop, and watching us come together as a team.
We look forward to the opportunity to share FIRST Robotics with the rest of Kingston!
