SUNDAY we met to fully and securely mount the shooter and the pick up mechanism
onto the robot. By the
end of the day Loki was able to pick up the balls off of the floor, put them into the hopper, and shoot them into a trailer.
THE POOL NOODLE used to get the balls off the ground and into the robot was the same color green as used on the top
of the trailers for the camera color recognition. Because it is illegal to have anything on your robot to mess up the
functionality of other robots it was determined that the pool noodle would have to be changed. After several failed attempts
of painting it we found a similar blue pool noodle that was then cut and mounted onto the robot.
THE PICK UP was
functioning to the point where it took another ball to go into the system to knock the previous ball into the hopper, but
after much trial and error it was found that a small rectangle of metal was needed on the front side of the pick up to
create the right resistance on the one side to push the ball into the hopper.
DRIVER TRAINING continued throughout
the week in the hall outside of the CAD room. On Friday the team went to Arrowhead, an old elementary school in the Shawnee
Mission School District, and set up a practice field in the gymnasium. Enough Regolith was acquired to cover about half the
field.
THE PROGRAMERS were able to get a successful autonomous code that does what we want it to do after much trial
and error and a few broken parts.
OVERALL in the past week we have mostly finished the robot, and learned a lot about
what the game play is going to be like. We have just two more days to practice and perfect our robot before we ship it on
Tuesday.
LUNACY is a game played on a low-friction field where team alliances collect and shoot orbit balls into opposing team trailers
Some of the challenges in this year's game are: slippery surface and wheels, human player shooting balls into trailers, and anticipated
collisions between competing robots.
Coming the weekend of February 13 - 15, Team 1777 will be working hard for four consecutive days. Yep, that
is right. For the four days before we ship, the Shawnee Mission West robotics team will be burning the midnight oil. The test
track will be open and operating in an effort to have quality practice time before meeting the shipping deadline for their 2009
robot, which must be crated and shipped by 5:00pm Tuesday, February 17th.
By coincidence, students are not scheduled
to be in school on Friday, February 13th due to parent-teacher conferences, and Monday is President's Day, a national holiday.
The team is taking advantage of this schedule to put together the final details for this year's robot, Loki.
"This has
been a different type of challenge from previous years", says Mrs. Vicki Davis, co-faculty sponsor of the Shawnee Mission West
robotics team. "We have designed a high-functioning and competitive robot, requiring a lot of game strategy and drive practice.
At this point, we are meeting our expected time line and are ecstatic to have time to practice and think about game strategy.
Thankfully, this year's school schedule allows us to have additional time."
