Friday Night Robotics – Competitions all weekend long!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, December 5th, 2009

For FNR this week, there are many competitions going on! Thursday was Physics I Team Design Lab Challenge Sessions, Friday was a FTC Competition and Saturday is a FLL Competition! After Saturday is the competition that is the most worthless but “necessary” … final exam(s). -_-

Friday, the FTC competition was amazing! FTC is FIRST Tech Challenge, and it’s where middle school and high school students build robots out of metal and some lego parts. The brain of the robot is an NXT, and they can program it in either RobotC, NXT-G, or LabView with the NXT toolbox.

The field is 12 feet by 12 feet, and this year’s challenge is called HotShot! The robots have to score wiffleballs into the zone in the middle, the nets above the zone, or the containers off to the side of the field. The wiffleballs are released onto the field when a holster tube is pushed. Yellow wiffleballs are better than white wiffleballs.

There’s a 30 second autonomous mode at the beginning of the game, followed by a teleoperated mode. The robots are controlled by a logitech controller that has joysticks and buttons (hahaha, what a lame description), which goes into software called the Field Controller Station. This software is on the laptop that the team supplies. The software then communicates via Bluetooth to the robot.

On the technical side of things, the Bluetooth works great if you have one robot. If you have 40 robots connected with Bluetooth, the air gets too cluttered. We ran into some problems the other day when robots started moving on their own and some teams would be disconnected if they switched from autonomous mode to teleoperated mode.

Problems or not, it was fun. Apparently it ran more smoothly than it did last year, so that was fantastic! Plus, one of the teams that I was helping gave me one of their team t-shirts! The music was great, and the event was streamed live from WCKN onto the internet!

There are 79 pictures that were taken live at the event up on team229robotics.com.

The FLL competition is today, Saturday December 5th. You can tune in to the live stream right here and subscribe to team229robotics.com’s RSS feed to have updated live blogging images as they come in!

Posted in: Other, Programming, Projects, Robot, School.

Robotics Floor = Closest thing to paradise!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, October 11th, 2009

A while ago, I was on the internet TV show – Fat Man and Circuit Girl! At that time, when I showed the robotics floor, we only had a camera and a desk. Now we have everything on the floor, and it’s virtually the closest thing to a paradise!

The robotics floor is basically a group of people that all really enjoy robotics- we’re all on the FIRST 229 team. We help out with 229 related activities, like remote mentoring. Basically any team that is in our county can call in and ask for help on their robot. I really like the feel of remote mentoring, it’s like being on-call for a robo-emergency. There hasn’t been any calls yet, though The fancy name for the floor is ‘Living Learning Community’… or LL Community. We would say LLC, but I was the nerd who pointed out we could easily be pwned for that, especially if someone had a company called Robotics LLC or Team 229 LLC. Plus, it’s just generally confusing if people look on the website and see a LLC, it wouldn’t make sense- so it’s LL Community. =)

This is the phone we use for remote mentoring. We’re going to be switching to VoIP soon, though:

We have a huge computer that has two displays, an extreme amount of graphical processing power, can record TV shows and has a Netflix account. It’s an amazing computer. The keyboard and mouse are really nice, too.

On top of this, we have a huge smart board! It’s really amazing! It stands up and has a projector sort of floating in front of it. You can touch the screen and it’s like your clicking!!! I tried some of the Processing applications that I made, and it works really good, and the particle finger painting looks extremely realistic!

We also have this intense camera! You can move it around from the internet, and it can zoom in super far, it’s creepy!!!

This is what it looked like with people in it, when it was in its most fire hazardous messy lego state:

It’s much cleaner now, though.

So yeah, that’s the Robotics Floor. I haven’t heard about this type of awesomeness at any other university, so Clarkson has done this first! Woohoo!

So, this floor is so super amazing, but what’s the worst part of it? I’d have to say the respect that the people on the floor have. There’s so little of it that it’s somewhat disgustingly sad

The main problem I have is Quiet Hours. For some reason, everyone on the floor doesn’t understand what QUIET means. So this means that I have to do the RA’s job and tell everyone to shut up, EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. I’ve tried being nice, angry, mean, aggressive, sad, happy, ignoring it, and telling the RA to shut everyone up, but nothing works! They don’t have the courtesy to respect anyone that likes to wake up at the beginning of the morning. How can such an amazing floor have that little respect for its floormates? It disappoints me and bedaffles me!

If I didn’t have respect though… I would play classical music super duper loud on my stereo, each morning, at 6AM. >:D But I haven’t done it yet, because I have respect. I respect people that don’t respect me… that doesn’t make sense. :S

Anyway, during the day this floor is the most amazing place on Earth!! This is what I see out of my window:

I hope that the bad part of the floor will improve, but it’s still the most amazing thing ever.

Posted in: Art, Projects, Robot, School.

Tech Tent!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, July 11th, 2009

If you are in up-state New York today, drop by the Potsdam festival to the Tech Tent!

MANOI will be there playing hockey, and there will be a FRC-like game called Puck Push!

Posted in: MANOI, Other, Projects, Robot, School.

FIRST Chesapeake Regional 2009

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, March 20th, 2009

Down at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, this regional competition was interesting.

There weren’t that many teams, and the field house was extremely smaller compared to RIT.

I didn’t like how they had to check everyone’s ID. I had to carry around my SEVIS + Passport + Medicare card + Insurance + University ID everywhere. It was super annoying! It also felt like we couldn’t really cheer or ‘have fun’ because the Navy would kick us out.

There was a funny part on Day 2 where the head of the Naval Academy (or something like that) was invited to be a judge. He talked about stuff, then he mentioned UAVs. I let out a woop and start clapping, and everyone looks at me like as if I’m weird!

This is the part that I dislike about FIRST. Robots are not RC cars. In FIRST, they are, and they completely overshadow REAL robotics, like UAVs! No one knew what a UAV was. I was shocked! UAVs are an amazing part of Robotics. FIRST should try to outreach more to real robotics.

229 made it to Quarter Finals.

It felt like we were all missing something that we had in Rochester. Maybe more energy. Traveling from Montreal to Annapolis in one day was too much. The rest of the group traveled from Potsdam to Annapolis in 2 days, but it is still a long and tiring trip.

Here’s some photos!

My favourite part of it all was when we all were singing Sweet Caroline!

They played the Soulja Boy song, and no one danced to it, to my surprise! I almost died of laughter.

Posted in: Projects, School.

FIRST Finger Lakes Regional 2009 – Photos

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, March 9th, 2009

As per my previous post, there was most definitely more than just words to this entire competition!

It was in Rochester, New York at RIT. The fieldhouse was quite large, which provided a big enough dancefloor for the HS students.

I feel that the playing field for the robots wasn’t big enough. The robots should be smaller. THere wasn’t enough room for them to move or do anything!

This was our robot. I didn’t really help in designing it, but I helped in getting it set up and making some tweaks.

The games were pretty intense, sometimes. We got disqualified from one match because a zip tie was sticking out, and another match we got “static” from crashing into the boards. We made it to semi-finals! Here’s a picture of our alliance drive teams.

And… a picture of the entire team! Woohoo

Just the mentors (I’m on the right)

That was a pretty fun weekend!

Posted in: Projects, School.

FIRST Finger Lakes Regional 2009

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, March 8th, 2009

On March 6th and 7th I was able to experience a FIRST Robotics Competition hands on for the first time! Our team, 229 Division by Zero, competed at the Finger Lakes Regional (FLR) competition in Rochester, NY at RIT.

It was interesting. Since I didn’t really know what to expect, I didn’t have many assigned responsibilities other than to figure out what I wanted to do. There are two main options of things you can do when you are a team mentor:
1) Scouting
2) Helping out in the pit

Scouting is recording all of the statistics of human players on different teams. You have to sit up in the stands with all of your fellow scouters, and record the data. I tried this once and had to bail, I find it hard enough to focus on one robot at a time, let alone count the flying moon rocks from a human player AND see if they go in or not.

Helping out in the pit is mainly what I did. If there was a nut that came loose but couldn’t be reached, I’d help fix it. Programming errors, electrical problems. That sort of stuff. When we got into the elimination round, I helped check to see what battery is most full, and bring it back to the playing field. I must say, I think we were the most well-equipped team with batteries!

It was a great competition! I enjoyed the elimination round very much. We made it to semi-finals, which is quite an achievement! We’re sponsored by the university’s SPEED program, and I’m pretty sure we don’t have any other sponsors. There are some teams out there who are sponsored by NASA!

My main concern though was that it didn’t really feel like a robotics competition, but more or less like a RC car competition. I expect a robotics competition to have AI, and to actually have robotics involved. For this competition, all the parts were machined precisely, and everything was planned out. It just did not feel like a competition of robots.

I was expecting more autonomous, which would make it feel more like a robotics competition. The fact that most of the excitement stemmed from the human players and not the “robots” also enervated me. No one really ‘cared’ about how well the robot was designed. In fact, during the gameplay, it wasn’t really the robots that scored most of the points, it was the human players. How ironic is that?

Maybe it was just a poor game this year. The whole smooth surfaces thing was somewhat cheesy, in my opinion.

I had one notable problem there. I didn’t bring safety glasses, so I always borrowed from the table set up at the entrance to the pits. However, there was one shift where it was not an ordinary person lending out the glasses.

This lady denied me safety glasses!

Yes, this is true! Denied safety glasses! Can there possibly anything more stupid than that? There was a box full with safety glasses! I totally felt like reaching over the table and strangling her, but I didn’t. Instead, I ‘explained’ to her that I always borrowed glasses from here. Eventually the conversation became so ridiculous that I just went in the pit with no safety glasses on. The end of this all was that I ended up borrowing glasses from someone on the team.

My first FIRST competition, and I’m denied safety glasses. Not the best impression… shame on them.

I also was not very enthused how FIRST mentioned the economy and lots of other political mumbo-jumbo in their opening ceremony, and… well, basically during the entire competition.

However, it was fun. It was different. I enjoyed it! Our next competition is in Annapolis, Maryland. Hopefully we will pull off a victory!

Posted in: Projects, School.

Where Am I?

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, April 21st, 2008

Why were there no blog posts for a week? EEEEEK!

I was studying….working…programming! ^^

I’ll skip the terribly boring stuff and get to the point(s)
- Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday – track practice
- Spent Friday in Ottawa ^^
- Half of Saturday I soldered stuff
- Sunday I programmed in a GUI & went biking in mud with a friend
- Monday I am watching the Habs Homework I’ll do after

There was an extremely good day at school last week… we get to make a Rube Goldberg machine for Physics!! This is SO cool it’s unbelievable to have this opportunity. I’m still in awe, and verrry excited to start working with the wood with our team! Sure… our team may go overboard for a simple simple machine combination contraption … but when will the chance of building a Rube Goldberg machine come around again? ;P

What I am working on now is getting my LCD to display a custom screen that I drew out on paper. What the problem appears to be is that it can’t handle many characters… I have 3 custom characters… I FINALLY got the 3rd line to work, so now I have to figure out the 4th line. It’s really annoying. I’ll figure out, somehow, how to cut down the amount of info/characters that has to be displayed.

Additionally, I’m working on making a SQLite database interface for conversation links and language models. Once I get it working, I’ll be linking it up with Robbie. You can then imagine all the possibilities with regards to the different language models that will be downloadable! I’m thinking a gigantor mental math mini-game one…

My fingers on my right hand are insane… thumb- raw’ish from soldering. index- has something wrong with it as I can’t lift it middle- a chunk of skin is missing because I unplugged my magsafe the wrong way… ring- my grad ring is ALWAYS falling off pinky- sprained a bit, from … I have no clue o_o

That’s all for now. I like how next year’s FIRST robotics is going to be completely different, with the new WPI programmer software and all! 802.11n will be great for ANNs too. I hope I am lucky enough to take part in FIRST next year!

Posted in: Other, Projects.