by The Hitchhikers | Jan 24, 2012 | Build season
Would you look at that! It’s already the start of the third week of this season of FIRST competition. That means most teams are wrapping up their designs and have begun prototyping their various creative ideas.
The Hitchhikers are no exception. The design for our robot is in its final stages and we’ve begun testing several designs for our shooting mechanism that will adorn the top of our robot. Our first design, a tube, resulted in limited success. It did move basketballs from the inside of the robot to the outside, but it did not do so with a high velocity that would be required for long shots.
But our second design, a wheel-based spinner, has been far more successful. Based on a design popularized shortly after kickoff, we used four KOP wheels to launch the basketballs up to thirty feet away, reaching heights of nearly fifteen feet. These tests were recorded and can be seen here.
On the programming front, our programming team has as well taken some important steps toward a successful robot. Today they culminated the work of the past two weeks of interpreting, testing, and modifying a tracking program for the camera with several successful trials of tracking and approaching the retroreflective rectangle on the backboard.
We also received a partial set of field elements as we closed up today. We now have a ramp and a bump, and we will soon have a set of basketball hoops. These were made by several of our mentors (many thanks to them for their hard work) and we can’t wait to get back and test our robot out on them.
It’s currently sixty days until our first regional, but significantly less until ship. We’ll keep working feverishly on our robot and do our best to hitchhike to a successful competition in South Carolina.
by The Hitchhikers | Jan 21, 2012 | Build season
The 2012 season is now in progress! The Hitchhikers spent January 7th in Raleigh at kickoff brainstorming with other teams about this year’s challenge, Rebound Rumble.
This year’s game is called Rebound Rumble, and is based on basketball. The robots can score in hoops positioned at three different heights for 1, 2 and 3 points respectively, and opposing teams must attempt to block the ball before it goes in. During the last thirty seconds of the round, each team has the choice to either continue making baskets or try to balance on a tilting bridge located in the center of the playing field. To promote FIRST’s value of “coopertition”, teams have the chance to earn extra points by balancing their robot on the center bridge with an opposing team’s robot. FIRST’s animation introducing the game can be found here.
We’re looking forward to another exciting season! To all other FIRST teams out there, good luck!
by The Hitchhikers | Oct 10, 2011 | Off Season
On October 29th, the Hitchhikers took part in the SCRIW (South Carolina Robotics Invitational and Workshops). This is an off-season competition held in Columbia, South Carolina. Off-season events are both important networking opportunities and an opportunity to train new members.
We drove to Columbia on Friday night and were up early and eager to compete on Saturday morning. We had a great day competing with our robot and attended a very informative workshop on team branding. Our old members got the experience that comes with every competition they attend, while our new members got to taste the thrill of competition for the first time and are now better prepared for their first season on the team.
We also had the opportunity to network and interact with other teams from as far away as Florida. This is important as our team sets its sights on attending more competitions and becoming more involved in FIRST. In line with FIRST’s principle of “coopertition,” it is vital that we maintain strong relationships with other teams, as we will likely be working with them at some point in the future.
Overall, our South Carolina trip was a strong success. We all had a great deal of fun, learned a lot, and are better prepared for what the 2012 season holds.
by The Hitchhikers | Apr 10, 2011 | Competitions
Well, the North Carolina Regional at Dorton Arena ended today. We placed twenty-sixth as a team out of the fifty-two in attendance. Many other teams fared very well, especially several of the rookie teams that participated. Team PyroTech placed seventh with a record of seven and three and won the Rookie All-Star and Highest Rookie Seed Awards. YETI Robotics went on to win the regional with the WiredCats and SPARK Robotics. Congratulations to all of you!
We, on the other hand, spent the entire competition plagued by different problems. Of our ten matches, only two went without a hitch and we hung logos in each of those matches. In the other matches, we shorted Jaguars (twice – which completely wreaks a mecanum drive), had the side of our arm’s pivot shaft fall out, had our minibot door fall open (makes driving a functioning mecanum drive hard), and had our USB cables smashed in our computer (making it impossible to plug in our joysticks and control our robot). Despite all this and the stress it caused, we all had fun and learned to work through it.
We also had the opportunity to work with XX3XY2, another rookie team. They had a robot, but no code for it. They had planned for several other teams to work with them and teach them LabView, only to have them unable to make the meetings. One of our students and one of our mentors took some of their time to work with them and got their computers set up and their robot moving.
Conversely, we struggled with our minibot for several weeks, and after burning out another motor Friday, Delphi E.L.I.T.E. extended a spare minibot to us. Even though we didn’t get it up in our last two matches, it sparked us to get our deployment system working so we can demo it in the off season, so we extend a big “Thank You!” to them!
We plan to be active until next build season, but just in case we don’t see you until then, see you next season!
by The Hitchhikers | Apr 6, 2011 | Competitions
T-9 hours and counting! Tomorrow is the first day of the North Carolina FRC Regional at Dorton Arena in Raleigh. Uncrating begins at 7:45am and the pits open to everyone else at 8:30. We’ll be there bright and early to make final changes to our robot and get ready for the matches on Friday when things begin in earnest. Saturday finishes everything up with the final matches and playoffs. Come out and cheer the Hitchhikers on to victory!
Here are a few useful links:
by The Hitchhikers | Mar 26, 2011 | Competitions
Though build season ended over four weeks ago, the team has still been hard at work perfecting our programming, strategies and minibot. Despite our efforts, there’s still a lot of work to be done. We’ve encountered countless problems with our minibot, though we are working through them with great efficiency. We’ve also been developing and fine-tuning our main Teleop code for the robot after making the decision to use LabVIEW instead of C++ for the code.
In the meantime, our outreach team is hard at work on our video for the 2011 Chairman’s award. The entire team is pumped for competition, and we can’t wait to see our robot in action!
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