Well, we are to be perfectly honest. Competition is quickly drawing near and in order to prepare, Mr. Grasmeder called a team meeting today. We discussed the workshop next week, which our veteran team members and mentors will have the pleasure of assisting with this year. Next Mr. Gras laid it on us: we need to shift into overdrive. Eight weeks sounds like a long time, but considering how much work everyone has to do, it’s really not too far away. We’ve got a few robots to build and a few programs to write and it’s not as easy as it sounds. Of course by “we” I mean the rest of the team. One of the many perks of blogging is the absence of a ticking clock working against me. Although, Mr. Gras is riding me about getting the movie done.

What’s this movie you ask? I refer you to my previous blog in which I mentioned that exciting things were coming for the Dead Robot Society. This aforementioned movie is one of the exciting things I was talking about. Another exciting thing is our new member! We welcome Alanna to programming. It makes me feel better that I am no longer the newest new kid. Thank you Alanna.

Today has been a pretty chill day. Everyone is buckling down and getting things done. I took advantage of this atmosphere and did quite a bit of questioning. I asked Alanna how her first day in the BotCave was and she said she was enjoying herself. I asked Kelly and Mary how the program was doing and they said, “Uhh our robot won’t stop moving…” (Not to worry though, the issue was resolved.) I asked the hardware team what they were up to and they said, “Workin’ on the duck grabber. It grabs ducks.” Then Mr. Gras tried to explain what he was teaching Alanna and I asked, “…what?” Not a Sunday goes by where Mr. Grasmeder doesn’t lose me in conversation.

However I have assimilated quite well into my own role. In fact, today Allison punched me and I responded with, “Hey! That’s my blogging arm!” I promised myself I wouldn’t become a nerd, but apparently it’s unavoidable. Enough about me. As usual our marvelous team has made excellent use of their time here. Alanna is picking up on her job quickly, the rest of the software team is chugging along with their program, and hardware is making headway with the duck grabber. In addition, Mrs. Newcastle went above and beyond her call of duty by preparing not only taquitos, but mini tacos as well!

Just another day in the BotCave.

That’s the uplifting message that got the software team through a few programming blunders.  After a few trial and errors, the lovely ladies of software were able to successfully make the robot recognize and move toward the green frog game pieces. I took a gander at the program the girls are writing and it appears that parentheses are used quite frequently. Apparently this abundance of parentheses is not excessive, it is critical. The reason I was picked as a blogger and not a programmer is becoming blatantly obvious.

After I was done gawking at the software team, I took a few steps over to the hardware team and gawked some more. However in this case it was less confusing and more visually exciting. The hardware team’s basic task was simple and to the point: build an arm. That much was clear-cut even to a simple minded blogger like myself. As I further inquired upon their assignment, I realized that their work was equally challenging. Granted they don’t have to use any parentheses, but they have to think around the various physical obstacles of the  game board and the limitations of the parts they are given to build with. A glaring similarity between the two teams is that I would be of no use to either of them.

Although I don’t seem to be on the same page as the rest of my team, I have made myself useful. Today I did a wee bit of updating on the homepage. Ten points if anyone can spot it (minus the select few to whom I’ve already pointed it out, you’ve been disqualified.) With the help of Mr. Gras I was also given my own to do list. Due to the fact that said list includes items aside from just blogging, I have inferred that I am indeed an indispensable asset and a multifaceted member of the team. And from that statement you as a reader can infer that there are exciting things to come in the imminent future for the Dead Robot Society.

On the whole, we’ve had another highly productive session. The arm, or the “piece of magic” as Liam called it, is quickly on its way to completion. With a little persistence, the software team has the program for identifying a game piece running smoothly. I become more computer savy with each meeting. Mrs. Newcastle has perfected the cooking time for her brownies. Mr. Grasmeder dipped out early, though I can’t imagine why he’d want to spend his Valentine’s Day anywhere but the BotCave.

This exciting announcement marks the beginning of a new season for the Dead Robot Society. The BotCave is filled with a delicate mixture of intelligence, hard work, and taquitos once more. The challenge for this year will be to solve an ecological crisis of sorts. We’ll be soaking up oil spills and saving frogs and ducks. In fact, why don’t you feast your eyes on this year’s game board.

2010 game board

Beautiful isn’t it? We’ll learn to love it. Or hate it depending on the trouble it may or may not cause us. The hardware team is currently at work figuring out how to get Botguy and his amphibious companions down from the raised platform. The software team is working equally hard at whatever they do. What that is I can’t tell you, I’m just the blogger.

While we’re on the subject of me, I should mention that I’m new to the team this year. And while we’re on the subject of new, I should mention that we have a few new members along with yours truly, Mia. The Dead Robot Society welcomes Alex to hardware, and Kelly and Mary to software. We’ve only been here a short time, and I know I speak for the group of nOObs (sp?) when I say that we feel smarter already.

But seriously, we’re learning a lot. This team has had great success in the past and we’re all happy to be a part of it. There wasn’t much socializing today, but it seems like we work well together. Everyone is doing their part and doing it well. Especially Mrs. Newcastle. She is constantly replenishing the BotCave with snacks of all variety. Good job Mrs. Newcastle.

Botguy leads his flock

In between the lava pockets and the abundance of cookies, a lot got done today. I saw hardware making progress on the claw of one of the robots. I’ve been told that the random beeps I’ve been hearing throughout my time here mean that the software team is in the process of programing the robot to move according to what it sees. I completed my first blog and Mr. Gras has found a way to amuse himself with the game pieces. All in all, today was a success.

This year, KIPR decided to switch the hardware on us, replacing last year’s XBC with the new CBC. Like Sam said in the previous post, the CBC has a new fancy touch screen and seems like an improvement at first glance. After a first glance, however, one begins to realize that it is really not much of an upgrade from the XBC. More like a downgrade. The XBC was tough, reliable, and familiar whereas the CBC is completely the opposite.

We plotted our general strategy at the start-of-season meeting and voted on general designs. We decided to use the Vex motors rather than the black gear motors we used last year. This eventually became a very large problem. After the hardware team finished a working prototype of VexBot, the software team found out through experience how utterly unreliable the CBC really is. Many times (there was a running tally on the whiteboard at one time) the CBC would crash in the middle of a test run, but the motors and servos would still be enabled. This was a very strange occurrence that we initially attributed to power level. We thought that the CBC just needed to run at above 6.6 volts to avoid any more ’suicides.’ That is, until it crashed on its first run after a full charge.

We began to zealously test the robot to try to find where the failures were coming from. The mentors suggested running “the simplest code possible that moves the robot.” The software team then created a few programs that moved the robot forward and backward using different drive methods (mrp’s, mav’s, motor commands) and came up with very interesting results.

It turns out that the culprits were the new Vex motors we were using. When running the tests, the software team found out that the robot would crash when VexBot would quickly change from driving full-speed forward to full-speed reverse. This was obviously a major problem for us because we want to finish our routine as quickly as possible (”Score early, score often”). I think that the problem was best explained by Mr. Gras when he said that it was similar to flicking the reverse switch on a ceiling fan while it’s running. When you hit that switch, the fan realizes that, suddenly, it’s turning the wrong way and it tries as hard as it can to go the right direction in as little time as possible. Naturally, this is very bad for the fan because it grinds itself to a halt and then runs the opposite direction like you wanted it to. Now for the robot, the same thing was happening. The CBC would get a command to reverse direction very quickly and would receive a large power overload while it tried to carry out that reverse.

Now, this was a very big problem. We could solve this one of two ways: we could add a short pause between speed reversals or we could switch to the black gear motors that we used last year and are more familiar with. We took a quick vote and decide to switch to the black gear motors which, unfortunately for hardware, meant we need a new chassis since the Vex motors are slimmer than the black motors.

I am happy to say that we are now running suicide-free and that the new chassis is actually more sturdy than the previous version. Hopefully, we can continue coding now with no more hiccups and accomplish all the tasks we set in our strategy! Piece of cake, eh software?

Then Mrs. Newcastle saw me, greeted me cheerfully and asked me about school, then as a sidenote asked if I came back to blog. I went down the basement, where Tucker and Ryan were like “sam! you’re back! you gonna blog?” and then Mr. Newcastle showed me the new board…. and… asked if I came back to blog.

Well, no, actually I did not come back to blog. I came back because I’m on break, it’s Sunday afternoon, I don’t have anything better to do, and I love my nerdy robot friends. But sure, I’m here, and it feels awkward to be sitting idly in the BotCave.

For Botball 2009, there’s obviously a new board and a new challenge. The challenge is meant to be a “green” challenge, with the main objectives including installing wind turbines, utilizing hydroelectric power, and storing fossil fuels. Botguy seems to be the most valuable object in the game, provided a good amount of object collection is done, because depending on where he gets to on your side, he doubles or triples the score.

This board has two hills and a valley, with each start box in the valley at the bottom of that team’s hill. The hill is utilized in a variety of “eco-friendly” ways: the blue foam balls representing water must be taken to the top so their energy can be used, and the pinwheel “wind turbines” are supposed to be installed at the top of the hill to harvest the most wind energy. The green tribbles represent “green” fuels, and the orange tribbles are meant to be fossil fuels. All of these together , when used properly, generate points and generate power to give light and electricity back to the blacked-out city of Robopolis.

Link: Botball 2009 Game Video

Our main challenges so far involve new hardware and software. The code has evolved and is giving the software team some new difficulties. The camera this year is a typical webcam, and it is a great deal slower than the previous camera, taking only about 3 sweeps per second. This delay will make it a bit more difficult to get a good reading of the board and to stop loop commands. The XBC has been replaced by a CBC, which, rather than looking like a Game Boy Advance controller, has a fancy schmancy touch screen and has a processing system inside it. Adjusting to the new systems is our first objective to keep in mind as we consider game strategy.

The Legobots ran into each other while crossing the bridge, and both fell off. Both Creates sorted tribbles well, and theirs went around stacking cups on its back. When our Create got across the bridge and into their shelter for those crucial 30 points, we all clapped and cheered, knowing we had done the best we could do. But their Create made it to our side too, taking with it -16 points in cups. It was a good round, we’d done all we could, and it was very impressive to have gotten as far as we did.

103 - 110

This gave us the third place title in Head-to-Head, following up a 6th in Seeding. Overall, we scored 4th. To be the 4th best Botball team in the world? I consider that an honor. We did the best we could, had a great strategy, and put up a very competitive fight against the best teams out there. It was nice.

Legobot didn’t hit the other half of the bridge down, and it ended up getting bulldozed into the corner by their create. This seemed to be karma, another bot returning the favor for last round’s mischief. Legobot was mercilessly crushed until the arms broke and it almost fell off the table. According to Connor, it was “protesting to the point of injuring itself.” Anthony was not there to run to the table holding the stretcher and shouting medic!,  but we managed to bandage up Legobot before the next round.

The Create obviously couldn’t make it across just half a bridge, but it had done a nice job rescuing crew members and plants so we ended up with a nice score.

But once that was all taken care of, it turned out to be an excellent round. The Create continued its consistent Tribble gathering and did much better on the cups this time. Their Legobot had planned to sit where our bridge would go to serve as a blocker, but we hit the bridge down before they got there so their bot got confused and drove off the edge. Although Legobot got to the other side, it missed the tape and didn’t manage to hit down the other half of the bridge. It seemed to have stopped running, but towards the end of the 2 minutes it started up again and ended at the edge of their start box. The start switch was precariously on the edge, and nobody could decide if it should count or not. Even Dave Miller, a member of KIPR’s board of directors, came over to try and decide our point total. In the end, it was a nonissue because whether that bot was worth 15 points or 30, we still had the round in the bag.

Six teams left!