[FTC] Sneak Peak 2

Attachment <1>

[FTC] Sneak Peek

Driving Base

[NJRC 2011] Conclusion

It is not the result, but the process that matters. This statement neatly encapsulates what I feel about NJRC this year. Although we did not meet our expectations when we first came in, we knew that NXT was never our strong point as we are unable to harness the full power of robotics. However, we still pressed on and attained the 3rd position for the Best Research Award. The highlight of the competition would have to be designing a workable omni wheel out of NXT 9797 parts. We have tried and failed many times in the past and this time proved to be the breakthrough. So here are some pictures! Enjoy!

 This picture was used to show that our robot was able to balance comfortably, even on this highest step.

 This picture was used to demonstrate the extremely low clearance, giving us a low centre of gravity and allowing us to have excellent balance.

 This would be the back of the 5 medals: 1 for each member and 1 for the school.

 This shows the position of the egg holder when the robot mounts the step. It decreases the chance of the egg falling out as it is positioned parallel to the ground.

 This is the front of the medal, showing this year's theme, domestic bots. The gold medal colouration was done using HTC's sepia filter.

 This is the engraving on the back of the medal, showing that we have attained third for the best research award.

Below are some other pictures of the robot as well as the medals:

So this will be my last year participating in the secondary category of NJRC. Hopefully, the cumulative experience gathered over the years will give us an advantage in the JC section next year. I'll be back.

First Tech Challenge 2011

Hi guys! The First Tech Challenge is coming to Singapore and the briefing was held at the Singapore Science Center today. I think that this is an interesting competition that allows you to advance your skills from just building Lego robots in competitions such as NJRC as well as the lower level FLL. The skills shift from using basic building blocks in Lego to metal parts in the basic sets provided. However, CAD software is also provided and these parts are allowed in the rules. Programming can be done in Labview or RobotC and this will allow for an option between GUI coding and C. However, the starting cost is rather hefty at SGD800 for the first 50 kits purchased  and SGD1600 from there on. This does not include registration fees or the purchase of any parts or services such as CNC milling. Here are some pictures taken at the briefing:

 Picture of the demo robot with a blue team flag. The front attachment is used for collecting the batons and is driven by 2 wheels with an Omni-wheel in the front to allow dual axis of freedom. This runs on the NXT processor and has a wireless module, a multiplexer among other components. From the looks of it, the metal frame is assembled from the basic set.

 This is the general playing field although the presenter was quick to point out that there were some flaws in terms of dimensions and emphasized that Science Center will get it fixed quickly. There is a mountain in the middle flanked by 2 balancing boards. On the sides are ramps as well as the collection points of the batons. The four corners are where the robots start from and the 4 movable trolleys are also dumping points for the batons.

This is another sample robot with the red flag. Almost all modules look the same except that this robot is driven by tank tracks instead of an Omni wheel + 2 motors system. In this picture, it is perfectly balanced on the bridge and hence scores a point! 

 This is the same robot as the one in the first picture, just from a different angle.

 This would be the baton dispenser loaded with batons. Essentially, there are 3 types of batons, the multiplier, which is completely colored and is not in the picture (2 of them), the regular baton as well as the magnetic baton. The scoring for each one is different but I will not bore you out here. If you need any additional details, please visit the FTC site (the link is posted below)

 This will be the front view of the second demo robot. Apparently, the battery pack take 3 months to ship so the organizers have allowed this homemade battery pack. You might notice that the robot is not symmetrical- something that I place much emphasis on in my creations to ensure an even drive.

 This is the movable scoring trolley. The 4 containers at the edges are for regular batons while the middle one will only be scored if it holds the magnetic baton. However, this looks the same as the regular baton and teams would be required to find some way of differentiating them.

 This is the blue version of the baton dispenser.

 This is a closeup view of the mountain, ramp as well as the balance board.

 This would be the field viewed from another angle.

 There is an infrared beacon placed beneath the medium height baton dispenser which is located in the middle of each side of the field. The presenter recommended that teams use this during the autonomous period to locate the dispenser.

 This would be the standard NiMH battery pack on the left and the homemade battery pack on the right. As you might have noticed, the size is the same and the specifications has to be the same for the homemade pack to be used as a replacement.

 This are the batons. The fully colored ones are the multipliers which were missing in the picture above as well as the regular batons. The double striped batons are loaded onto the robots (5 of them) while the single ones are placed in the dispenser. Among them, there will be one magnetic baton.

This is the identifier flag which is to be placed on the robots and indicates which team it is on.

The rules are really quite complex so I am afraid I am not able to summarize them here. You could go to the FTC site at http://www.ftcsg.com.sg/. I hope that I have helped with some pictures to give you a better idea!
Thanks for visiting!

FLL Run 1

Hey guys, first time uploading a videos so I have no idea how this is going to turn out. Nothing much in this video though, Just shows my FLL robot completing the first run (inserting the bone bridge). I hope that I will be uploading the second video soon because the second one is way bigger. Did I mention that the base design has yet again been changed? After all the builds with the NXT wheels, I have officially decided that tracks will do a way better job in terms of accuracy so I went with the tracks. The results have been positive so far, with the accuracy being extremely good until some heavy weight goes on it. That means more runs and more videos to upload. The upload is done already so this is going onto the blog first. Thanks

End of holiday rush

Hey people, I really cannot stand Lego. Not that their software isn't good enough, I find the hardware exceptional when compared to the China made versions. It is the software that I'm frustrated about. In the beginning, I wasn't too critical because I thought the lag the occurs every time NXT-G starts was due to the old and thus slower dual core processor. After re-installing NXT-G on my new laptop a few weeks ago, I figured it had to be that the software itself was lagging. After all, I was using an Asus X42JR with an Intel i7-740QM, a 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon graphics card and 4GBs of RAM. The loading time was my biggest gripe. For a laptop that has the ability to handle Command and Conquer, HAWX, and Counter Strike smoothly, I do not see how a relatively less taxing program like NXT-G could tax the processor. Even after it has supposedly "loaded", it will show a blank windows for quite a long time before the GUI loads. When programming, the interface continues lagging, with connector wires often overlapping, making programming confusing. I can certainly tell you that even with a Chinese program like Robo Express with a slightly inferior hardware build does not lag even on a dual core processor. Moving on, my FIRST Lego League preparations have completely stagnated and the competition is approaching quick. 1 month to prepare (ruling out the week with Outward Bound School) is barely enough to finish the programming, which also means that we will not have the time to do any testing. Either ways, I will be working more on it next week (hopefully) so I hope we can produce a robot which is capable of scoring the full 400 points before school reopens. Things will be very different after school reopens with competitions like Robocup Singapore open to prepare for. Which reminds me that we will have to budget for it, again in a week. Looks like the final week of the holidays is not going to be used for unwinding yet again, or continuing to produce more Photoshop works. Alright, post again soon, bye!

Whoa Blogger is excellent too. After pressing save as draft more than 10 times, it wouldn't save. Deciding to be smart, I opened a new tab, copied the content and pasted. Guess what? It posted on the first try. Makes me wonder what the problem was.

FLL 2010-2011

Hi people! Good to know that my blog is getting at least some hits. Today's post will be about my team's FIRST Lego League preparation so its going to be rather dry. So the initial robot was pretty much a first draft, 2 motors facing down at 90 degrees mounted onto an NXT facing towards the playing field and a third motor mounted onto the NXT straight. The reason behind the NXT facing downwards (which looks really weird) is so that I wouldn't have any problems with the 3rd motor mounted low which would aid the lowering of the bone cast. Then I started the programming which got extremely irritating to start the program. Secondly, the low center of gravity, which was supposed to be a good thing, made the robot weigh down too much, scratching the field and caused the rotations to be inaccurate. So me being me, I chose to rebuild and went back to my signature NXT mounted sideways robot which I had finished on Monday. The cast fitting could be quite a problem even though I mounted the motor downwards as seen in my last test. I will be working on it soon, probably tomorrow once I get permission from my parents to go back to the lab. So now for the hard part which is the attachment building and the programming which I suspect would turn out to be a fully hard-coded program. I will try to upload some photos too and possibly videos if I get anywhere near points on tomorrow. Meanwhile, nothing interesting really happened over the weekends. One thing that I'm really angry with right now is LG's incompetence. I sent my phone (GT540) in for servicing about 2 weeks ago and the got it "fixed". Or at least their definition of fixed. Whenever its turned on, the camera would be activated and the buttons are really loose. Conclusion? back to the service center. Anyway, I am really happy that for once, I'm not doing my holiday homework on the last day and I have actually started so kudos to me. I will have to leave now but I'll update this soon. Goodbye!