2/13 Meetings Notes: SeaPerch Design Selection, FTC Practice, Trips

SeaPerch:
The SeaPerch Team has completed rough draft designs after a discussion of the design criteria and constraints.  They also began selecting a design using a decision matrix.  Detailed designs are due at the next club meeting on Feb. 22nd due to the holiday on Mon. Feb. 17th.  The SeaPerch Leadership Team will meet this week to select a design and refine the schedule determined at last week's meeting.
The club has chosen it's SeaPerch Leadership Team at last week's meeting on 2/6:
CEO: Kristoff Robinson
CTO:  Mechanical - Stephen Pettus, Electrical - Mahmuda Liza
CIO: Emmanuel Douge
Notebook- Emmanuel Douge Poster- Lauren Stuckman
Documentation Support Team: Nadira Bostic, Damien Gonzalez

FTC: The team practiced their presentation with the NAVSEA engineers role playing as judges. Minor design refinements and driving practice are the major goals before the State Competitions.  A DC motor was burnt out and could be a major setback, workarounds were discussed.  We will try to dedicate Room 145 for FTC team practice on early dismissal days this week.

Upcoming Trips: Get permission slips from Mr. Koehler ASAP, see the calendar posts on the right panel

Next Meeting: Wed. Feb . 22nd

Safety, Common Sense?

All robotics club and team members should take the safety quiz today below. Thanks to Brandon Brinson for giving the Safety Overview presentation.
http://tinyurl.com/hsesrobosafety

SumoBot Champion

Congratulations to freshman Kristoff Robinson for winning the SumoBot wrestling competition on 1/23/12! Robotics students will be competing again at a field trip to NAVSEA on 2/23/12.

SumoBots Competition continues...

Congratulations to the teams who advanced, Joseph Capizzi and Justin Santiago advanced to the top of the winner's bracket.  They will face-off with the winner of the loser's bracket to be declared the champion.
Round 2 Results: Click here
Sumo Bot Finals are scheduled for Wed Jan. 18, 2012, due to MLK Holiday on Mon. 1/16/12

SumoBot Competition Round 1 held

Congratulations to the teams who advanced...
Qualification Seeding and Round 1 Results: Click here
Round 2 scheduled for Jan. 9, 2012

Meeting Summary 11/28/11

Sumo Bot Competition

• Free design, build, and testing time
• Discussed SumoBot competition scoring details; Qualifier on 12/12/11, Competition on 12/19/11;

FTC

• decided on next critical module
• began to prototype design

Next Meeting 12/5/11

• SumoBot:  Programming with timers; Gears- the tradeoff between power and speed

Meeting Summary 11/14/11

Agenda:

Programming Intro (New Member SumoBot Design Competition)

• Programming software overview(NXT-G), downloading software to robot, tutorials access
• Looping with Motor and Sensor blocks examples
• Programming Process: Plan robot behavior, Predict robot behavior before running code, run code and observe behavior, compare actual to predicted results, make adjustments, repeat process
• Experimental design time

FTC Team(Bowled Over Competition):

• Continued brainstorming designs based on game strategy selected last week  

Next Meeting

• New Member SumoBot Design Competition

• Programming continued: using the wait command to control robot behavior
• Construction tips
• SumoBot game scoring details
• Free design time
• Time permitting: Gears, the tradeoff between power and speed

• FTC Team(Bowled Over Competition)

• Begin to document design ideas into design notebook

• All: Drexel Univ. Engineering Trip on Fri. 11/18, see Mr. Koehler for permission slips

Meeting Summary 11/7/11

Summary

• HIGHLY RECOMMENDED OPPORTUNITY for those who are 16 years old by June 25, 2012: Work on high-tech engineering projects at South Philly Naval Base(NAVSEA) this summer. The engineers spoke about the paid summer internship, SEAP, offered to high school students. Application Deadline: January 6, 2012. See Mr. Koehler about recommendations.
• A presentation by Mr. Koehler was given to describe the role that motors and sensors play in a functioning robot to new members
• Today, our FTC robotics team accomplished a great milestone by finalizing their strategy for the competition.

Plans for Next Week

Robotics Club

Next Meeting: Mon 11/14

• Programming sumo-Robots
• Mechanical Design

Robotics Team:

Next Meeting: Wed 11/09

• Functional Requirements
• Design Parameters
• Time Allotments
• Identify Most Critical Module

Meeting Summary 10/31/11

Summary

FTC for Robotics Team:

• Everyone: Brainstorm designs for specific game strategies, ball collector/storage, bin stacker, magnetic ball recognition, etc. (repeat assignment from last week)
• Field team:  Began building ramp for field from field blue prints(Terrell/Antonio)
• Mechanical/Programming: Experimented with raquetball collection and storage designs; Built, programmed, and tested a 'harvester design' from the Tetrix Quick Start Guide (Josh/Jaime)
• Wireless connection: tried to understand what is need to configure the Samantha wireless connection(Brandon/Mentor Scott)
• Bring in IR Seeker/Beacon for brainstorming(Eric)

SumoBots Competition for new members(run by Eric, Mentor Pinkesh):
We finally completed our NXT robots. Congratulations!!

Now remember to go over the different types of sensors we learned today.


Sensors
SONAR sensor - used to determine distance to object
Light sensor, used to determine surface tint
Sound sensor - used to detect sound
Touch sensor - used to detect contact with an object

Plan For Next Week:

FTC:  Use brainstormed designs for specific game strategies using game rules handout distributed; Select strategies that are reasonable with timelines for scrimmages and competition

SumoBots:

Design Process

• Engineering Notebook
• Brainstorming

"Bring'n It Altogether"

• Programming
• Mechanical Design

PS: Don't forget to check out competitions that may interest you on our website.

Objectives for 10/31 Meeting

Robotics Club

1. Finish Building NXTbot


2. Review Robotic Basics:

• The Brick
• Motors
• Sensors

4. Design Process

• Engineering Notebook
• Brainstorming

Next Week:
"Bring'n It Altogether"

• Programming
• Mechanical Design

Meeting Summary for 9/26/11

Hey Robotics Team, 

In todays meeting, we were visited by some of the members from the Naval Base who shared some of their expert knowledge with us.  The robotics members looks forward to more meetings with the Naval Base.

We found our Treasurer!!

Say congratulations to David Walters. He gave a riveting speech explaining why he should be our Treasurer, and was voted in. 

     Congratulations David!!

Our kick-off day is near and the robotics team is preparing for it.

• Andrew and Antonio are preparing for the demonstration for the incoming members. (Anyone is welcome :)
• Brandon has finished the survey for incoming members- any input is welcomed.

Last thoughts:

Having an engineering notebook is essential, especially to do as well as we hope to - this thinking was advised by our visitors from the Naval Base.  Some pointers our president, Eric Smalls, gave to have an organized engineering notebook was:

1. sign your name in each entry
2. write in pen
3. number your pages.    

Eric has an example of his own, to use as a guide. 

Meeting Summary for 9/19/11

The 2012 Competition Season

For the 2012 season, the Robotics Club will compete in rigorous competitions such as: FIRST Tech Challenge,  the TSA-VEX competition, and the Sea Perch competition. We are looking for new club members to join the HSES Robotics. We welcome anyone willing to give a good effort towards this club.

Interest Survey

Veteran members of the Robotics Club are formulating a survey to get a sense of the people interested in joining this organization. The survey questions will include material regarding: your past experiences with robotics or engineering in general, participation in Science Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) competitions, your innate interests in learning about STEM fields. Additionally,  Ms. Kim Weaver welcomes students interested in Engineering and have questions regarding it. Her room number is 213 and she is waiting for you to come and visit her. (You will see me there!)

Closing Thoughts

We would like to welcome Justin Santiago and Damien Gonzalez, two freshmen that came to the Robotics meeting today full of energy and enthusiasm. Thanks guys for attending!! For those of you with your design notebooks, if you come across any ideas whatsoever for a design, sketch it in your engineering notebook. Do not be afraid to come to the Robotics members for feedback or ideas because we are more than happy to give you our opinion.

Meeting Summary for 9/12/11

Competitions for this Season

• Science Olympiad; mouse-trap car competition
• VEX is this spring
• Sea Perch is imminent

Robotics Club Activities

• In-school competition:
• Build an object from a kit you have been provided with
• Get a grid composition notebook to draft designs
• Preparing for the competition will last about 4 weeks

• Recruiting
• What incentives should there be for each meeting to attract new members?
• Draft of survey for new members will be done by David Walter
• Demonstration of sensors to new members will be performed by Andrew and Antonio.

Last Thoughts

• If you do not have a composition book for Robotics only, have one by next Monday 9/19
• Think of what type of kits could be used for Robotics members
• We have yet to designate roles to the remainder of the Robotics Team
• If you have a role you think would be good for you, please let the president the remainder of the Robotics team know.

Next Meeting: 9/19/11