Missing Parts

Despite a lot of our parts going missing, we're continuing to work on Paul's plan to win the challenge by scooping up the balls with the robot itself, then launching them into the goal.

New Approach to the Wiffle Ball Challenge

Having scrapped our original arm idea of launching the balls, we are taking a new approach to our upcoming wiffle ball challenge. Instead of tossing them, we are planning to drive over the balls to scoop them up, then shoot them into the cooler.

Just uploaded the finished SolidWorks 3D Model of the robot's chassis.

Arm Progess

Progress on the arm has been slow, but we've managed to make headway with our catapult-styled arm, which needs to be fast enough to launch a wiffle ball into a cooler.

Our Design so Far

After merging with Concrete Spaghetti last week, our groups begun work on our wiffle ball robot. We plan to use some sort of catapult, though that is subject to change.

Merging Teams

After completing their racquetball challenge, Concrete Spaghetti is ready to merge with our team and combine resources to build a robot for our wiffle ball challenge.

Expanding our Chassis

Now that we have completed the racquetball challenge, our group is moving onto the wiffle ball challenge, which consists of tossing a ball into a cooler from varying distances (farther away = more points). To account for the more powerful arm required to toss the ball, we have expanded our chassis so that it is approximately 18x18in, and switched to larger wheels.

Racquetball Results

Thanks to Fulton "Chick Magnet" Norman's excellent driving skills, the Platypi managed to snag a 90/100 with only half a second to spare. This is our group's first "A" on a challenge, and starting next week we will be merging with iRobot for the wiffle ball challenge.

Racquetball Challenge

Now that we are finally back in our room after a two-week hiatus due to testing, we are ready to complete the racquetball challenge. Our robot uses a series of four rotating gears to pick up and drop the ball into one of three hoops. In order to lift this heavier arm efficiently, we shifted to a compound gear ratio for our robot.

Pictures were lost during a phone crash, so I do not have any.

DAY 19 - Arm Construction Assignment

After we completed the basic construction of our Squarebot, we were tasked with creating an arm for the robot. The arm must be 18x18x18, and is due by this Friday.

DAY 15 - Turning in Our Robot and Making Some Changes

At long last, we have managed to finish constructing our robot, and getting it to run consistently. After turning our robot into Mr. Martin, we decided to experiment for a little while, and added larger wheels to the back of our robot, replacing the default smaller ones we had been using.

DAY 6 - Beginning SolidWorks Construction

With Creed still absent, I have decided to start work on our robot's SolidWorks design, while Michael attempts to complete our robot's structure. Being short a team member has really put a hamper on progress, as we can only get 2/3 as much work done as the other teams.

Our robot and SolidWorks design are due Friday, March 1st, 2013, and I am using the VEX SolidWorks Library for our design.

Picture is a placeholder and not our content, it was taken from
a SolidWorks blog.

DAY 3 - Motor Subsystem Construction and Playing Catch-Up

Due to a misappropriation of screws and other parts, we had a few small roadblocks today and yesterday in the construction of our Squarebot's motor subsystem. Progress was also hindered by the absence of Michael  (21/Feb) and Creed (21-22/Feb), while other groups had their entire teams. However, we managed to make a decent amount of progress, and I gained a bit more insight as to what goes into a good engineering notebook, while Michael learned how to use a multimeter.

Chassis assembly (start of period)

Chassis assembly (end of period)

DAY 1 - Inventory and Blog Setup

Hello, and welcome to our notebook for our Engineering class' VEX Robotics Design System project. This blog will be updated twice a week, detailing our group's assignments and progress.

 This week, we started gathering the parts we require to build our first robot with VEX - the Squarebot. At present, we seem to be missing a few parts (screws, etc.), but we're working on gathering up what we need.

We were not assigned much this week, save for taking inventory for the Squarebot and setting up the blog, but check back for future updates!

Beginning assembly after taking inventory

Taking inventory