Nov. 17th 2015

       Today in the computer room, one of our mentors, Jordan, and the animation team began filming the parody video with a student acting for test shots. Also, they continued brainstorming for the safety animation video.

     

        In the machine room, a student and mentor finished a five drawer cabinet and repaired two   

       chairs.

   

November 5, 2015

  On November 5, 2015  USFIRST PhyXTGears Team 1720 took a plant tour of Littler Diecast Corporation in Albany, IN. There were 26 students and mentors present for the tour. President, Mr. John Littler, and two other employees divided the group into three parts to see the die casting process, machining area, and shipping area.
  Die casting is a sophisticated foundry process by which 1220 degree aluminum metal is forced into a steel die at high pressure to form a near net shape part. When the casting is removed from the die, it is cooled with water and then placed in a trim die. This removes the runner and overflows from the parting line of the casting.
  The casting can go in several directions based on the customer needs: 1. It can be machined. 2. It can be vibratory finished. 3. The casting can be impregnated to make it tight. 4. It can be powder coated, etc. or any combination of these secondary operations.
  Littler Diecast is a major sponsor of Team 1720. We appreciate his support and interest in out team and the chance to see his manufacturing operation.

October 31, 2015 and November 3, 2015

This past Saturday on October 31, 2015 we hosted an EV3 LEGO Workshop for 4th-8th grade students! The 4th-8th grade students were able to come to our workshop building to learn how to program and construct their own Lego robot. Our team was there to mentor the students on how to build, program, and how to fix their mistakes that they might have come upon. Once they were done with building their Lego robots, they were to program their Lego robots to do predefined tasks that we have given them to do, some of the tasks were to have the robot drive 12 inches, use the light sensor to find the red line then find the black line and turn, another task was to have the robot use the touch sensor then back up and turn.

Today on November 3, 2015 we were able to have Dr. Meenu Goel visit us and give a wonderful presentation about how robots are used in medical facilities. She talked about some of the history behind robotic's use in medicine, starting with laparoscopy, or MIS, which stands for Minimally Invasive Surgery, all the way up to the Da Vinci System, an advanced set of robots designed to assist doctors in specific surgeries. This system provides doctors with 3-D magnified images of the patient. Thanks Dr. Meenu Goel!

October 24, 2015 Purdue FIRST Workshop and October 27, 2015

 This past Saturday on October 24, 2015, our team went to the Purdue FIRST Workshop. Our team split up so we were able to sit in on as many classes as possible in order to gain as much information as possible. Some classes that we got to sit in on was FIRST In College which taught us about how, even after high school, there still are opportunities for us stay involved with FIRST Robotics! Another class some students visited was LabVIEW Basics, presented by Purdue PhD student Dustin Cruise.  He showed how he uses LabView to control Mechanical Engineering Lab systems for flame height, flame color detection, and other instrument controls and monitoring.  This allows him to set up very precise laboratory tests, with excellent repeat-ability.  For us, Labview allows for robot repeat-ability in Autonomous Mode, and accurate control during Teleop Mode.  He showed how to use different "data types", such as boolean, integer, floating, double precision, string, etc.  These types of data are often required within our FIRST Robot code as well.  Dustin also showed how to use clusters and dimensioned arrays.  He pointed out that one of the great benefits of Labview of MatLab, and other such tools, is the ability to live-graph data.  This can allow Teams to monitor things happening on the robot and be able to troubleshoot.

 One of the other classes some of our students sat in on was Driving Straight with Gyro Control
Chris Elston (Team 1501) did an incredible demo of gyro control of their robot. He showed the robot starting off going quite straight, then making a 90 degree turn, and heading off very straight again. He also showed how their team implements a "probe" dashboard in Labview, with ALL Global Variables that are important, across their entire set of code! This was amazing!  It allowed them to tweak things in their code, without any re-compile time... This could be critically helpful to Phyxtgears. He also gave a lot of info on the NAVX Gyro Board which directly mates with and interfaces too, with the RoboRIO.  Making gyro functionality a breeze.

SENSORS:  A slew of sensors was presented, and the most helpful time was the Q&A, which allowed us to inquire about various Labview Code Examples of how to implement and monitor these sensors. One important take-away was that successful teams have used "shielded cables" to quadrature and other analog-voltage sensors and encoders!! He also talked about how Talon SRX Controllers have embedded limit switches for tight control.  And, he reviewed the Pull-Up Resistor Design of the internals of the RoboRIO; and, how to connect Normally Open and Normally Closed switches, correctly, to the RoboRIO. He said to check out http://kevin.org for various sensor and robot details...including for gryo controls, etc.

Some other students sat in on Appendage Design. This presentation showed different lift, arm, and such systems, with insight on weights and balance issues that different systems can present to the robot. And, other info about lift systems and how they can bind, how "four arm" system can lift keeping the fork flat horizontally, and how continuous and cascading lifts route their cables to provide better operation. Oh, and Phyxtgears specifically got KUDOS from the presenter for successfully implementing our 2015 Scissors Mechanism. He pointed this out, because typically Scissor Mechanism bind, and have maintenance issues.

Lastly, one of the other classes was Introduction to PID Control. Jeff Shelton, Purdue PhD student presented and demo'd PID feedback control.   He showed how most times you can get away with just the Proportional implementation.  But, adding Integration and Differential calculations into the control equations can reduce "ringing", which would show up in our robot as hysteresis swinging back and forth across the desired direction.  He even had Labview demos, using the fully-built-in PID vi's (virtual instrument modules)!  He was able to type in numbers and demo-live, on a servo controlled motor, how the control circuit will overshoot and then return to the desired final value, if the P, I, and D aren't correct.  And, in the end, he caused the system to "race", by changing some values to their extremes.  For us, this could cause our robot to completely overshoot the desired direction, or wind up going into a spin!  For other systems, like a jet turbine, you could cause it to explode, if it "raced"!  Kinda critical to learn how to control something appropriately!

There was so many more classes which our team was able to sit in on. The ones listed above was only a very small portion of the abundance of information we were able to learn that day! As an update on today, we mainly worked on cleaning up our building for an upcoming LEGO EV3 workshop event. So, tune in next week to read about how our LEGO EV3 event went!

CAGE Match October 17, 2015

This past Saturday our team went to Indianapolis for CAGE Match! We had to be at our team's workshop at 5:30 in the morning and didn't get home until 10 at night. It was quite a big day! Our team participated in 7 Qualification Matches, 3 Quarter-Final Matches, 3 Semi-Final Matches, and 2 Final Matches. We ended up winning two awards; we won the "Drive it Like You Stole it" award as well as the second place award! The drive team on Saturday was John as the driver, Hannah as the operator, Mike as the drive coach, and Asher as the human player. Before the game started, several of the team members went to each team asking them to answer a survey about what their team's robot is best at and where they prefer being on the field. Anthony and Kaylynn scouted the other teams. Jessica and Ashley spent the day taking pictures. Kaylee and Ashley spent some time showing around a VIP guest at the event and explaining to her and her grand-children how FIRST robotics works. At the end of the day when we all got back home we were all exhausted, but had a really fun time at this event!