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Welcome
to the official website of FIRST Countdown to Ship Date: We are a FIRST robotics team for high school students of the Rockford, IL community. We represent a uniquely diverse collaboration. Our team is open to any students in Rockford and the surrounding areas. The team is comprised of students from public, private, and home schools. This gives us the advantage of wider student diversity as well as distinctive organizational challenges. |
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2009 Team Updates Post Wisconsin Regional: We had a great time at the Wisconsin Regional. Thanks again to all of the volunteers and teams for making it such a fun and safe experience! At the end of qualifying rounds we had a record of 7-1-0 and were the number 1 seeded team. During our first round at the competition, we helped to set the high score for the regional event at 105 points. We then selected Winnovation (Team 1625, Winnebago, IL) and Fondy Fire (Team 2194, Fon Du Lac, WI) to be in our alliance for the elimination rounds. After going undefeated in the elimination rounds, we earned our first regional championship and got our tickets punched for the World Championship Event in Atlanta, GA from April 16th-18th. Stay tuned for news from the Atlanta!
Post Midwest Regional: Our first robotics competition at the Midwest Regional’s in Chicago has been a great learning experience for the Rockford Robotics team. We not only did exceptionally well in the competition, but we also learned some really good lessons that we can apply to our second competition in Milwaukee.
The team arrived at the competition on Thursday morning with some modifications in mind to make on our robot. The balls were still getting stuck at the joint from the internal conveyor to the turret, so the team added plastic strips to funnel the balls into the conveyor so they would not become jammed inside the robot. This done, we went to our first two practice matches and our new modifications did not work After further modifications and failed attempts, a huge team discussion took place. The whole driving team and a few others voted for the removal of the turret in order to replace it with another conveyor system that would go on top of the robot where the turret was originally located. The team would also cut the hole from the internal conveyor to the turret the whole width of the top to allow the balls to flow into our new conveyor easily. This would allow the balls to come through our conveyor systems and be shot out from the top conveyor into the opponent’s trailer extremely fast. Due to some quick and good wrenching done by the team, the new mod was put on and we went to our last few practice matches to test it out. To the joy of the whole team, the added top conveyor system works exceptionally well!
Seeding matches began early Friday morning at the regional competition. Rockford Robotics had 8 seeding matches total and we won 5 out of the 8. Throughout the whole weekend the team was always in the top 15 teams out of the 54 teams that were there. Rockford Robotics made it into the quarter finals by being picked for an alliance with two other really good robots. With this alliance, we were able to win all of our quarter-final and semi-final matches! We were now in the final match against Winnovation from Winnebago and the two other teams on there alliance. The rules of the game were best out of 3 matches, so when we lost the first match by 8 points, we had to win the second one to stay alive. But contrary to our wish, we lost the second match and this put us in second place at the Midwest regional. Though the team is bummed we did not take first place, we are extremely pleased about how far we did make it in the competition and we are looking forward to doing better -winning- at the Milwaukee competition in two weeks.
Rockford Robotics really pulled together during the competition and one thing we are proud of is that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. When we look back over this competition we are amazed at how far we have come since the shipping of our bot. At the time of shipping, we had a bot with some problems and a team with little to no practice or de-bug time. After the competition, our bot was one of the best, fastest, most efficient conveyor-dumping robots out there - and it's something to be proud of! Of course, without your wonderful support we would not have been able to make it this far and we want to thank you. We also hope to be conveying in our next update that we will be heading to nationals - because this hard working team deserves to win the Milwaukee regional! So here is a list of some of the things that we learned at the competition and would like to implement for our next competition: 1.)
We are ordering some larger sprockets to increase our drivetrain
speed by 50 to 100 percent. But with speed comes some slip due
to the low friction surface, so we are also hoping to implement
some form of traction control. -By turning the motors off, we decrease the stress on the motors and reduce unnecessary heating thereby decreasing the probability of burning a motor out. -After each match we were already draining the batteries down to one bar out of 5 on the charger. If they were drained more, we would increase charging time in between matches and potentially be decreasing our robot performance near the end of each match. This is a big benefit and something we are going to bring up proactively when we are being interviewed by the judges in Milwaukee . 3.) Our conveyor system works good and is simple. It also has MANY interchangeable parts (rollers, 2 of the motor / gear box setups which are actually most of the system) and one of the important lessons learned is that we need to stress the awesome functions of our bot to the judges. 4.) Competition readiness is a must. Thus, one of our goals is to get in on the extra practice rounds available so our driving team can get as much experience as possible. 5.) We have a trophy to show off! So Rockford Robotics plans on showing this and videos of our excellent performance in Chicago to other teams during the Milwaukee competition. 6.) From day one, we are planning to help the less experienced alliance teams to have a basic autonomous mode program. This will allow us to not only show gracious professionalism but also help out our alliances chance of winning. 7.) To be safe rather than sorry, the team is discussing putting heat sinks on the motors so they don't burn out during the match. 8.) Many teams had highly complex mathematical ranking systems for scouting. Rockford Robotics did an amazing job with our scouting at the Chicago regional, but we are wanting to improve even more by cooperating with other teams and trying to learn from their ranking methods. 9.) We seemed to forget about the maintainability aspects of the design. After changing out 2 motors in Chicago that required complete disassembly of the conveyor system, we plan to modify the mounting to allow for change without conveyor disassembly. This list is not an exhaustive one, but it summarizes a few items that we want to do so we can improve our robot even more. We hope that as we go and compete in Milwaukee , these implementations will launch us to nationals! Our
2009 robot "The Incredible Hulk" has arrived. We are
looking forward to Week 5- February 10, 2009 The
5th week of the build season has been filled to the brim with
work, work, work. The 3 systems of the robot - the turret, hopper,
and conveyor systems - have been fully designed and are being
built. But the main issue for the team this week has been the
frame. The frame which was required to integrate all 3 sub-systems
go a late start, therefore it didn't get to the welder until late
last week. It was cut, pop-rivoted together, and sent off to the
welder for tacking together on Friday. The frame was picked up
on Saturday to do some work on it over the weekend, and the mounting
of the 3 systems was finalized. It went back to the welder Monday,
and it's back so we can start assembling subsystems onto it tonight.
The team has finished proto-tpying the lift system for the bot,
the conveyor parts are complete, and the angles for our turret
have been welded. Our bumpers have been assembled and we made
sure that they weighed the maximum amount - 18 pounds - so our
robot can have weight at ground level to be more stable on the
slick playing field. Week
4- February 2, 2009
As week 4 wanes, the insanity is beginning to build, but the experience of a team of high-schoolers and mentors designing and building a robot in 6 weeks in incredibley worth it! Week 3 - January 19, 2009 As week two closes and week three dawns, team 2039 is excited to what this new week of the season will bring... but before we get to that, we must tell you of the epic adventures of robot design during week two! The
design of the robot has taken off. Our design plan for the robot
includes having a fast conveyor system that will pick up balls
from the playing field, then once the balls reach the inside of
our robot they will |
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The special ops subteam has finished the design of the conveyor system for the robot. The conveyors will consist of two 3 foot belt assemblies that spin in opposite directions, this will suck the balls up the conveyor and into our hopper system. The system will be run by two motors. We will be approaching sponsors to have some of the custom parts needed for our conveyor system! The special ops team has subdivided even further to design the hopper and turret systems. The
programming team has begun work on, well, programming. The camera,
provided in the robot parts kit, has been placed on the kit bot
and the team has started programming for autonomous mode, as well
as, tele-operated mode. |
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The
goal for week three is to rap up the special ops designs and start
ordering parts. We have also designed a pit structure that will
hold our banner, have a white board, peg board for hanging tools,
and a coat rack and Week
1 - January 5, 2009 |
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