Trobotics BLOG

It was March 2008. I was in grade 10 back then… and I was sitting in one of the Auditorium seats. Like previous years, we were having our term two end assembly, and people were being recognized for their academic achievements. The assemblies, though, were also a time of showcasing what was being created in school programs. This time, the Trobotics team that year decided to showcase the award-winning robot that they built for FIRST Overdrive. As the robot drove around and threw large balls into the audience, I was intrigued by how the whole thing appeared to work flawlessly launch after launch. Witnessing this robot was one of the inspirations that pushed me into joining Trobotics next year, and it also influenced my participation in Engineering 11, where we built smaller VEX robots to compete with local schools.

Let’s speed time up a little. Now it’s February 2009. I’m working on two robots, and both had to be completed on very tight schedules. The spare time that I had after each mid-year exam was mainly spent rebuilding my VEX robot and testing our FRC robot. Fortunately, Billy was around that year, and he worked with me to program both the VEX and the FRC robots. Both fared well in later competitions. In particular, the VEX robot was able to survive past the playoffs and our school swept the competition away at the Vancouver Island competition. The FRC one did equally well and survived into the semi-finals before losing after some technical issues brought down two of the three alliance robots, including ours.

To finish things off, we’ll return to the present. This year has been full of ups and downs. I wasn’t able to redo VEX or even participate in an engineering course due to a course conflict with drafting. However, home and product design itself is a very interesting area, and I was able to learn how to create parts and assemblies with Autodesk Inventor. In FRC, my team had issues with the robot destroying its own tongue (or kicker that is), so we kept several spares ready just in case more problems arose. (Luckily they were only used once in Seattle.) There were also issues with pieces not wanting to come off, things cracking, and pieces of wood being stuck in the wrong places, but we managed to overcome those as well.

Overall, doing robotics has been a very fulfilling experience for me. It has given me new friends, new skills, and it has stimulated my knowledge on science and math. In fact, the experience has been so good, I wish I could freeze time for a little longer, as I’ve been doing robotics for only two years. Unfortunately, I will have to move on as I’ll be heading to university next year. What will happen then… I really don’t know. One thing that I certain of, however, is that the experience that I received within the David Thompson robotics programs over the last two years have changed my life.

- Allan Kuan
DT Trobotics 1346 2010

The story of the kicker began three months ago in January. During our first week into this year’s build season, we were already researching and prototyping several different vertical and horizontal kicker designs. The one that we settled upon was a simple lever arm that was to be stretched back and then released with the power of elastics and pneumatics. However, things moved along at a snail’s pace after that… and by the third week other priorities (mainly building the robot frame and drivetrain) took precedence. At the sixth week the kicker was still far from our radar… the second robot needed to be finished by the time FedEx came around with their truck.

Once the competition robot was gone, things still moved slowly. Physics Olympics at UBC was on its way, and many students that were working on the robot immediately went in that direction. Despite the loss of manpower, some members of the team were still able to put together some new kicker designs together that were able to go around the backspin roller. The kicker transformed into a complicated piece of machinery, with the arm made of wood and the kicker itself made of steel tubing. The C shape design ensured that the kicker won’t inadvertently damage the roller or some other component. The kicker was powered by four short-stroke Bimba cylinders and four strands of elastic surgical tubing. As this design was a “third draft”, everything was pretty much bolted together.

All of our efforts, however, managed to pay off over the last two days. On Monday, the kicker came to life after Sanjay tweaked the code to fix some bugs. It managed to kick balls roughly 2 metres vertically and almost 3 metres horizontally off the ground, then retract, all within two seconds. We did run into a small snag as a rise above one metre is actually undesirable and could earn us some penalties within the game if the ball flew out of bounds. In the end though, it was still really exciting to see the thing work almost perfectly the first time. The next day was devoted more to tweaking the height of the kick. After a few adjustments were made (namely the zip-tying of bars onto the kicker to simulate a different kicker profile), the height was reduced, although not substantially enough to stay under a metre.

For our final robot, we will probably make the kicker more adjustable at the bottom so that we can fine-tune the proper height of a kick. The design also calls for more of the kicker to be made out of pieces of aluminum welded together, although the wood that is being used right now has been handling the forces exerted on it surprisingly well. In fact, the current design could be just simply copied over (although with that modification to the bottom of the kicker).

- Allan Kuan
Trobotics 1346 2010

As you might know (or not), the robot was shipped out today. Remarkably, it was somewhat far from that state just a few nights ago.

A lot of things have been put together over the last several days:
- the assembling of the actual robot
- the refurbishing of old IFI wheels
- new battery holder
- new control box
- new control box place

Last night we did some other things:
- robot roof with velcro
- two sets of bumpers
- some additional frame reinforcements
- hockey sticks =O

But anyway, in short, we just barely managed to get the robot out the door in time for shipping. There’s still many other components that we haven’t finished as well, and those will have to be assembled at the competitions. Hopefully we don’t have all our practice matches in the morning. =O

- Allan Kuan, DT Trobotics 1346 2010

Does the title interest you? xD

But anyway, we’re currently building our robot for 2010. Two of them, in fact. Unfortunately… I’m not sure that I can release that many details so soon… other than the fact that it’ll incorporate lessons that we’ve learned over the past three weeks.

Some team updates might get posted here, but from now till Seattle we might not reveal a lot. Don’t worry though, the team is still working hard! =O

- Allan Kuan

This week, I am beginning a several week transition from the current Flash engine, which is programmed in ActionScript 2, to the latest programming language, ActionScript 3.

This is a complete rewrite of every part of the engine!

Why the switch to AS3, when AS2 works?

• Increased efficiency of the site, as a result of AS3 optimizations, and video hardware acceleration.
• Future-proof for the latest technologies, at least until Adobe makes AS4.
• It is an internal cleanup of the project. I can debug and spot problematic code easier.
• Code is separated from the FLA file, which is essential for an open source project.

What changes will I see?

• The new Containers model will bring the AXLE Engine to par with real rendering engines. This will allow the creation of more than two columns (left and right) and allow creation of columns within columns. No more hackish attributes like keepvert!
• Hardware video acceleration: now all videos will run smoother!
• Resize recognition: widgets will resize themselves dynamically to take advantage of screen space.
• Parallel loading: widgets will now all load simultaneously before being laid out. This reduces overall loading time for widget-heavy pages.

Over the last week or so, Billy has upgraded the AXLE engine and has been tweaking it lately to make it less buggy and more usuable. The list of improvements include:

• content controls and permissions
• upgraded page editor with expanded options
• upgraded text editor
• new sidebar that can be pinned to the side of the main website

I’ve been also improving the site’s content at the same time. There are now:

• descriptions on FIRST, FRC, FTC, VEX
• team list for 2010
• reorganization of site: robots now in own section, new VEX section, new FTC subsection
• Breakaway info, including layout, scoring, overview, and penalties
• Elevation historical info
• team history for FRC 2009
• game descriptions for 2008-2009 VEX and FTC

However, the renovation is still not complete. Billy has many more ideas on improving the site (and I’m not quite sure what things I should list here), and there’s still a large to-do list for the website content:

• Clean Sweep game info
• rosters of past and present VEX, FVC, and FTC teams (almost complete)
  
• improve Breakaway intro graphics
• expand history of VEX in Pacific Northwest
• links + connections to other team websites
• team history for VEX 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 and FTC 2008-2009 (almost complete)
  
• pics of VEX + FTC robots from past and present

However, with mid-year exams looming, all of this stuff will probably have to wait for a bit. But you can see that we’ve done a lot lately to bring the site up to date and worthwhile to use. =)

-> Allan Kuan, DT Trobotics 1346 2010

Earlier this week, we upgraded the AXLE Flash Engine, the underlying technology (developed in-house) which makes Adobe Flash a lot nicer to edit.

This upgrade broke a few things.

In the coming weeks, I expect service to be gradually less glitchy as the incompatibilities between the old engine and the new engine are ironed out.

UPDATE: This blog is now running on the latest Wordpress, after 3 minute downtime (don’t trust the Wordpress Upgrade Guide for major upgrades!)

The following decisions have been made on Thursday:

• long wheelbase with roughly 8 wheels, all of 6” or 8” diameters or mix of both.

The following things were also done:

• A more realistic kicker was built on Wednesday and finished today. It’s basically a wooden box with an opening for the arm to swing through. Elastics are secured to the top of the box and a barrier salvaged from old robot parts prevents the kicker from going too far. It underwent a few tests in the shop (basic kicking with elastics only, with elastics and pneumatics (pull in), and with elastics and pneumatics (push out). We then later took it to the cafeteria along with the 2008 Overdrive ball launching robot so we could test out the pneumatics in a double-action manner (one switch pushes air in and another pushes air out) with a solenoid. These tests were considered generally successful with the ball managing to score or go over at least one bump in most cases.
• A mock robot frame was built on Wednesday. It was tested but problems were found with the design. The angles that the robot would have climbed were considered unstable in situations where opposing robots played defense / offense while we’re crossing the bump. As a result we went and converted the frame such that it was a long wheelbase design. When testing this out we found fewer issues. Maneuverability may become a concern however if all wheels were made of a sticky tread material.
• The Trobotics website has been updated with a new engine. However, some things that used to work before have been “broken”, including the picture galleries and video player. We wish to get these fixed as soon as possible.

On Friday we decided:

• The Overdrive robot has been chosen as the next candidate to be cannibalized for spare parts. Not all components will disappear immediately; there are plans to keep the ball launching mechanism. However, some pneumatics cylinders, storage tanks, and speed controllers might be taken out to be reused for this year’s robot.
• The robot’s gearing will not be the standard one like the one used in last year’s robot. Owing to the need to accelerate and decelerate while crossing the bumps, we have decided to increase the torque on the wheels instead. This change also allows us to play better defense on the carpet, although it’s hard to tell what that will do to the Plaction tire treads as they are known to wear out early.
• Due to the expense of buying a new one the 2009 robot’s control system will need to be used on this year’s robot, which will leave the other one non-functional between now and the end of the FRC Seattle Regional. The non-functioning state of Kitsilano’s team however also means that we can borrow their control system and/or components for use.
• Actual robot construction will (finally) start on Monday as most design items have now been researched, prototyped and tested. Two robots will be built; one will be kept for training and programming purposes while another will be the actual competition robot.

That’s it for this week! Watch for more updates soon!

-> Allan Kuan, DT Trobotics 1346 2010

For those who haven’t been able to attend some recent meetings, a lot of important things have been decided upon. Being the nice person that I am, I’m going to give you the details of these changes… even though there’s a physics test around the corner and its 3:39 in the morning. =O

• The robot will be wide and narrow. This allows for better ball handling and intaking.
• There will be 8 wheels on the robot. If spaced equally apart, when the robot drives over a bump, when it just reaches the top the gap between the second and third wheels will allow the robot to pivot without tipping, dropping, or being unstable.
• We are going with a swinging elastic kicker that will span the full front of the robot. The actual configuration is still being explored. Prototyping for a more realistic kicker will get underway today.
• We tested a ball “magnet” roller using the lower intake wheel of the red robot from 2009 with a stationary and moving robot test. The test went successfully… maybe too successfully… as the ball was treated like an orbit ball a few times.
• Wood will again be prominent on the robot. It’s the most abundant material we have at school, and it’s generally the easiest to work with. Metal may be used in other key areas but due to the bumps and impacts there are worries the metal might crack under stress while the wood might just flex instead of breaking. Also, there are more people that can handle wood relatively easily.
• The robot will be more integrated this year than last. You may remember that last year the robot was designed so that the drivetrain could be detached from the rest of the robot so that it could be used for testing after build season. This year, there are plans to build two robots for this purpose.
• I have asked Billy to update the Trobotics site with a revised Flash AXLE engine. The upgrade will commence immediately when he finishes preparing for it.

–> Allan Kuan, DT Trobotics 2010

Hello! Welcome to the first update of Trobotics in 2010! Hopefully I’ll be able to keep people updated about what’s happening in our team this year! So far, most of our efforts for the last two weeks have been focused on research and development:

- We’ve been designing, prototyping, and testing various designs of ball launchers. Swing-type elastic kicking devices have proven to be most successful in launching balls at a considerable height and distance; however they were also seen as being too bulky. Lately we’ve been also testing a compact linear elastic kicker and tested pneumatics as a retracting mechanism. However, the restricted air flow in the cylinder acted like a shock absorber when we tried to release the kicker, the cylinder didn’t retract enough, and even without the pneumatics (and using elastics instead) the kicker was unable to launch the ball at all.

- Robot design is also quite critical in this game, especially with turning and getting over the bumps. Emphasis has been placed repeatedly on a design that can have a low centre of gravity to avoid potential tipping scenarios. There was also a lengthy discussion over the orientation (long or wide) and drivetrain (6 wheels or 8?) of the robot and the potential consequences that the configurations may bring.

- We’ve also run tests on possible ball manipulators. The basic design involves a wheel spinning forwards and creating backspin on the soccer ball. At first we tacked on a prototype on the nerf ball shooter with some AndyMark tires, but the downward force of the wheels kept recoiling the ball and the robot. There were also problems with the speed at which the apparatus operated (it was too fast at first), and there was evident damage to the ball due to the force of friction between it and the wheels.

- The Trobotics website is still alive and well. In fact, due to new arrangements I have permission now to make changes to site content. There are now two new pages of Breakaway info, and I may add more later if I have time. I also hope to keep team members and other FIRST teams updated on team discussions and decisions with this blog… and I’ll try to update it at least twice every week.

- 2010 is a special year in more ways than one. Yes, there’s the Olympics in town in a week or two, but we’re also trying to make a move to computer assisted design. There are a few people in school now that have the skills necessary to run Autodesk Inventor. The program will help us realize time savings, virtualize the design before it gets built, and allow us to check for conflicts and discuss potential changes.

That concludes our lengthy but necessary and potentially inspiring post for DT Trobotics at the start of 2010. Hope you enjoyed reading!

–> Allan Kuan, DT Trobotics 2010