One of the ways we are con­stantly im­prov­ing our safety pro­gram is to visit lo­cal com­pa­nies who have an in­ter­est in safety. (more…)

From May 19^th to May 21^st, C.O.R.E. spoke to the stu­dents there about FIRST and our pre­vi­ous years as a team and pre­sented our most re­cent  ro­bot, Daedalus.

We took a three day trip to She­boy­gan to talk with many stu­dents at their own STEM com­pe­ti­tion based on rock­ets.  Not only we were pro­mot­ing STEM, it was also a lot of fun. Quite a few stu­dents were in­ter­ested enough to con­sider start­ing their own FTC or FRC team! Over­all, it was a suc­cess­ful week­end.

From March 31^st to April 2^nd, we par­tic­i­pated in the 10,000 Lakes Re­gional Com­pe­ti­tion, held in the Williams Arena on the Uni­ver­sity of Min­nesota-Min­neapo­lis Cam­pus. We learned from our ex­pe­ri­ences at the Wis­con­sin Re­gional to bet­ter our team and our ro­bot. Be­tween the two re­gion­als we de­vel­oped a new mini­bot and mini­bot de­ploy­ment sys­tem. We also con­tin­ued to im­prove our au­tonomous code to con­sis­tently hang an Uber­tube.

We ended qual­i­fi­ca­tion rounds at 6th place from a group of 63 teams. For our al­liance we chose Teams 2232: Deus ex Machina and 2545: Quan­tum Me­chan­ics. In quar­ter-fi­nals, our al­liance lost one round and won the next; in the de­ter­min­ing round, our al­liance lost: 72 to 89. Our team earned both Rock­well Au­toma­tion’s In­no­va­tion in Con­trol Award and UL’s In­dus­trial Safety Award. Safety in C.O.R.E. is more than a con­cept or idea–it is a cul­ture. Our mem­bers dis­trib­uted safety man­u­als and gave safety pre­sen­ta­tions at the 10,000 Lakes and North Star Re­gion­als.

We can’t wait to re­veal the changes we have made to au­tonomous and our mini­bot, Icarus, at the 10,000 Lakes Re­gional in Min­neapo­lis. Our ro­bot, Daedalus, con­sis­tantly scores uber­tubes on the top-mid­dle peg dur­ing au­tonomous. Icarus 2.1 was in­spired by a Chief Del­phi thread. To learn more about Daedalus and Icarus, click here.

C.O.R.E. was featured in a Waukesha Patch article about our participation in FIRST’s Wisconsin Regional Competition featuring the 2011 game: LOGO MOTION.
To read this ar­ti­cle, click here. For more in­for­ma­tion on Lo­go­Mo­tion, click here.

March 10^th through March 12^th, 2011, our team went to the Wis­con­sin Re­gional  at the Mil­wau­kee US Cel­lu­lar Arena. It was a great learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for our new dri­ver and rookie mem­bers. The drive team did ex­cep­tion­ally well, scor­ing quickly and ef­fi­ciently as well as de­ploy­ing the mini­bot. Be­fore the 2011 10,000 Lakes Re­gional, we plan to make the nec­es­sary changes to our mini­bot and scout­ing sys­tem. In the end, we ranked 7^th out of 51 teams. We also made it all the way to the quar­ter-fi­nals with the help from More 1714, Muk­won­ago B.E.A.R.s 930 and Saber Ro­bot­ics 2506. We also re­ceived the Web­site Award rec­og­niz­ing ex­cel­lence in stu­dent-de­signed, -built, and -man­aged FIRST team web­sites.

From March 10^th to March 12^th, C.O.R.E. will be at­tend­ing the Wis­con­sin Re­gional! We would love it if you could come and join us and cheer us on. It will be at the US Cel­lu­lar Cen­ter, in Mil­wau­kee. (Spec­ta­tors come from 9:00am un­til 6:00pm, and spec­ta­tor ad­mis­sion is free, but as­sume $5-10 for park­ing.) For more in­for­ma­tion on the com­pe­ti­tion, go to the FIRST page. For more in­for­ma­tion on this spe­cific re­gional, go to the Wisconsin Regional page.

Of­fi­cially three days till Ship! Every­one is work­ing hard and try­ing to get every­thing ac­com­plished. The ro­bot is up and run­ning and placed its first of­fi­cial tube on the rack. We’re hop­ing that Daedalus will suc­ceed, even though we have new dri­vers, and that Icarus flies high.

CAD team has al­most com­pletely built the ro­bot on Au­toDesk, and are fin­ish­ing up the last few parts. The Ma­nip­u­la­tor team is mak­ing the guards to pro­tect the ro­bot and will be mak­ing spare parts for the ro­bot. They are also mak­ing mi­nor mod­i­fi­ca­tions. Chas­sis team is still work­ing on the sec­ond chas­sis and check­ing and fix­ing all stripped gears. The Lift team drilled ex­tra lift plates and as­sem­bled the sec­ond lift. The Mini­bot team is re­disign­ing the de­ploy­ment sys­tem and hope to in­te­grate it into the ro­bot. Pro­gram­ming is mak­ing progress on pre-pro­grammed heights with an en­coder. In ad­di­tion, they have also op­ti­mized the code for the ro­bot, col­lab­o­rated with drive team to fi­nal­ize the con­trol scheme, and be­gan test­ing for tele­op­er­ated mode. Our Web­site, An­i­ma­tion, and Chair­mans’ awards were sub­mit­ted. (To see our an­i­ma­tion, click here.)

This week we are meet­ing nearly every day to per­fect the ro­bot. Dri­ver train­ing kicked into high gear. We have dri­vers in train­ing that are nearly ready to take up the con­trols on the field. This is due to our hard­work­ing con­trols and pro­gram­ming teams who have fi­nalised and per­fected their re­spec­tive ar­eas.

Early in the week we had prob­lems with our ac­tu­a­tor sys­tem. Our lift team put in a phe­nom­e­nal amount of ef­fort to re-de­sign our ac­tu­a­tor in record time. Our ma­nip­u­la­tor team per­fected the grab­ber by ad­just­ing the spac­ing. Other mem­bers of our team cre­ated our bumpers and per­formed re­pairs to the crate.

CAD is vig­or­ously try­ing to keep up with all of the me­chan­i­cal teams changes.  Also, our an­i­ma­tion team is close to fin­ish­ing. They are com­plet­ing the fi­nal ren­der to HD qual­ity and have to still have to com­pile their scenes.

The Chair­mans es­say is near­ing com­ple­tion. It is be­ing proofed by sev­eral of our stu­dents and men­tors.

We are now at 19 days to Ship date and competition is coming up fast. We have reached a consensus and decided on our name for the host and minibot: Daedalus and Icarus. This comes from the ancient Greek mythological tales of the great inventor, Daedalus, a son of Athena, the goddess of wisdom. According to myth, Daedalus and his son Icarus were trapped and, as a method of escape, created wings of wax and feathers. Icarus indeed flew out of his prison, much like we hope our Icarus will climb high in Logo Motion.

The finalized control board was built and mounted on the chassis. The actuator was assembled and we conducted preliminary tests with it. On February 4^th, the manipulator was tested and successfully grabbed a tube. We were able to utilize our 3D printer to produce the rollers to be used on the manipulator. The programming team continued to work on their drive code to run on voltage mode in addition to working with a tracking system to be used during the autonomous period. Another subteam began to construct field elements so as to allow for more accurate practice with the host bot and minibot.

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