Justin's Blog

 Archive for the ‘Robotics’ Category

It’s a very exciting day in the FIRST Robotics calendar, the day the game is revealed and the six week build season starts.

It looks like a great game this year.  I am particularly fond of the bonus points for balancing with an opposition robot at the end of the game.

If you’ve got high school kids, they really ought to be taking a serious look at joining a FIRST team like MAX1071 here at Wolcott High School.

Just two years after building robots, Iona is now building satelites with NASA’s Chief Technologist!

:: Justin ::

Today was the kickoff of the 2011 FIRST Robotics season.

Iona and I joined in with Team MAX1071 to watch.

Here’s the game.  I am really excited about the mini-robot

:: Justin ::

This weekend was the 3rd Annual Where Is Wolcott Invitational (or WIWI) as we like to call it.  This is where Team MAX, build the game field from this years FIRST Robotics game in the Wolcott High School gym and runs a day long competition.

This was our biggest competition ever with 23 teams.  Three of them were particularly cool.  We had one team made up of mentors from any of the competing teams who wanted a shot at driving a robot (I found out quite how difficult it was).  We also had two brand new pre-rookie teams that will be joining FIRST next year from Kennedy High School in Waterbury, CT and Goodwin Tech High School in New Britain, CT.  Reaching into your community to help others get started is an essential part of the FIRST experience and it was great to see how well the folks did (they certainly didn’t drive like rookies).

It was a really hot, humid day, and we did have some technical difficulties in the morning getting all the robots to talk nicely to the field, but we battled through (thanks Mike!) and the afternoon went really well.  It turned into a really exciting competition. with at one stage four robots hanging off the floor at the same time.

One of the fun things we do is have a human game in a break during the day.  This year we had team members take the place of the robots.  They had to crab walk and kick the ball and for the first 20 seconds (when the robots work autonomously) the humans were blindfolded.  It was a great game and a lot of fun.  I think we probably could have turned it into a full competition in its own right.

As always, our friends over at Team GUS provided the best food you could ever imagine.

Thanks to everyone who took part.  It was exhausting but a whole lot of fun!

You can see everyone’s thoughts here

:: Justin ::

Yesterday, we started early (5:30am at the high school) and took a small, crack team down to Bridgewater, New Jersey to compete in their invitational the Bridgewater-Raritan Battle Royale.

In many ways the point of the trip was to bring back the field for our tournament next week, but not only did we compete, we won!

It was a great day and we had some incredibly gracious (and professional) hosts who put in a power of work getting the field into the truck for us and in showing my how to use the new scoring system (I have to get some practice in before Saturday).

WiWi – Are you going?

:: Justin :: 

on June 5th Team MAX 1071 will be hosting the Where Is Wolcott Invitational.  This is an opportunity for FIRST Robotics to come and compete at this year’s game Breakaway in a slightly more relaxed environment.

We have a great time hosting the event and we add some fun twists.

One of these is having a “Mentor Team”.  Team GUS is very generously letting old fogies use their spare robots and mentors from any team can sign up to take on the students.  If you are interested, sign up here.

If you’ve never been to a robotics even, then you definitely want to come and join in.  It is a whole lot of fun (it’s free) and thanks again to Team GUS we have the best pulled pork sandwiches in the world!

See you in Wolcott (if you can find it!)

:: Justin ::

A nice article from the Waterbury Republican-American.  You can click on the images for full size versions.  Seeing Kyle, Matt and Kevin (all freshmen) there working on the robots reminds me how soccer helps kids get smarter.  The only member of the drive team I hadn’t coached came from out of town,  and a lot of the rest of the team has been through the ranks of one soccer team or another of mine! (isn’t it cool what you can take credit for!)

:: Justin ::

Day one ended with a couple of nice victories to leave Team Max heading into the final qualification matches and hopefully the elimination rounds tomorrow with things looking good.

On top of that, their various interviews and presentations seemed to go well, and Iona was on the 6 o’clock news.

Here’s some of the action (click on the images to watch videos):

The Team MAX drive team is introduced

A fine performance in autonomous mode.

In the thick of the Action

:: Justin ::

UPDATE

In addition to all the other wonderfulness, it was announced at the end of the day that Team MAX won the prestigious Excellence in Engineering award:

This award celebrates an elegant and advantageous machine feature that recognizes any aspect of engineering excellence and innovation in the real world. This includes, but is not limited to: design, wiring methods, material selection, programming techniques, and unique machine attributes. The criteria for this award are based on the team’s ability to concisely describe verbally, as well as demonstrate, this chosen machine feature.

Things are going well so far with the robot both clearing balls in autonomous mode and scoreing in tele-operated.

Much, much, more to come!

:: Justin ::

Had a tremendous day today, my brother Nick and his girls games through to visit and we spend a gorgeous afternoon in Edinburgh’s Botanics

After tea tonight we were able to watch Team MAX in the pre-season scrimmage from Suffield, Connecticut thanks to a live web stream.  It’s exciting to see the robot in action and see how the games develop.

:: Justin ::