Wrote this for the robotics team website and posted there, but felt it would work here too.
For many members of the robotics team is having to CAD (designing a component in a Computer Aided Design program) a piece before building. "Let's just do it, and then we can CAD", "I want to start fabrication, enough of this". And the worse part, after CADing, the piece is then placed onto the virtual robot to see where best to put it. ARRRGGGGG!
There is a real reason to do this, and at least two members of the team learned this last night, or I think they did, if they were paying attention. The students were working on the design of the robot lifting winch, they did a nice job of getting it done, and then were more than ready to make it, after all we just got a major piece of it delivered yesterday, so why not?.....But....placing the winch onto the frame, we saw that there was only a few hundredths of an inch between it and the frame members, that was a bit close. So, what to do? Simple, reopen the CAD file and change one piece. Nothing wasted, ready to cut Thursday. A little of work ahead saves money and time in the future.
A little lesson learned, not only about building robots, but hopefully about almost anything.
Showing posts with label FIRST Robotics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FIRST Robotics. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
FIRST Kickoff 2010
Saturday was the big day, Kickoff for FIRST Robotics. This is the day we find out what the mission for our robot will be, and then we have six weeks to design and build it. I should not say we, but the team, Team 340. This year the game is called breakaway, which in effect is robotic socceer.It looks simple, but with so many variables, it will be a challenge. At least the scoring seems simple.
This is a great example of project based learning, as I wrote about last year. Watching the students think, develop ideas, test, work together is great, 3 meetings a week...it is worth it.
This is a great example of project based learning, as I wrote about last year. Watching the students think, develop ideas, test, work together is great, 3 meetings a week...it is worth it.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
One month until FIRST Robotics kick-off.
One month until FIRST Robotics kick-off.
One month.
YIKES!
This will be my second year doing this. Last year I came in late, perhaps a month before kick-off. If you did not read my posts regarding FIRST last year, go back and have a look.
This program is problem based learning (PBL) at its best. At the kick-off all teams are given information about what their robots need to do, and are given a parts kit, they then have six weeks to design, build and test the robot, a short time. I should say this stuff is really not given to the teams, there are many costs involved, this money issue is really another type of PBL for the students to learn.
I have learned about this money raising issue during the "off season" of robotics. For a few years the team has had a major corporate sponsor. The sponsor paid for most expenses. With the way things are now, the funding has been cut down by a fair amount. Due to this we need to raise money, and so is every other organization. The competition for these few dollars has become fierce. Chicken BBQ, Bottle and Can drives, Pumpkin Chunkin, golf tournament, and just about anything else you can think of. Hard for parents, as we buy and help with all of these things, but if we want the kids to be able to do this, we work on it.
The problem of raising money. A real world problem. An ugly problem. Businesses are tapped out at this time of year, the local businesses that try to give to everything in the community are feeling a squeeze. I sent out feelers to several businesses which I work with, and have only one interested, but so it goes.
Anyone out there want to donate money to the team?
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Final FIRST (for this season)
The FIRST robotics season for 2009 has finished for team 424. The team did great in the Finger Lakes Regional, earning the 6th seed in the finals. Not bad for what is essentially a JV team. Team 340, the Varsity team, squeaked into the finals and ended up in 2nd place. Not bad, two teams from the same school making it to the finals, out of 50 teams.
Last year I brought both Eric and Rudy to the regional competition, not knowing much about the program. It was at this point that Eric became interested in joining, and being unable to get his school to start a team, joined up with Churchville-Chili HS, a school to the south of his district.
Watching teams from around the state and Canada yesterday, something dawned on me. Many of the schools have large teams, somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 members. Each of these teams only build one robot. Churchville, with fewer members build two robots. There are other jobs on the teams other than building the robots, publicity, bookkeeping, fund raising, community outreach to name a few. So there are jobs for these students. But the real reason many join is to get experience in the engineering end. How much hands on experience can you have with a large team and only one robot? When you get down to it, really there about 10 members of each team that understand and really work on these machines. What having two teams allow is more students to work on a robot, and members to help each team build and problem solve.
FIRST has been a great thing for Eric to be involved with. I have not seen him so excited about anything except when he was little and played with Thomas the Tank Engine trains. Other than these two, he has sort of been doing stuff, but not whole heartedly. I have seen his personal growth in the last few months, he has gained confidence, learned to work with others and became a leader. I have never seen this part of his personality before, and perhaps he shows it in other places, but for me to witness him in action made me proud to be his father.
I am looking forward to next season, if Eric stays on the same team, he has several other sophomores who work well together moving on with him. We all are looking forward to how this will all turn out.
My other FIRST Posts
First FIRST
Second FIRST
Third FIRST
Fourth First
Last year I brought both Eric and Rudy to the regional competition, not knowing much about the program. It was at this point that Eric became interested in joining, and being unable to get his school to start a team, joined up with Churchville-Chili HS, a school to the south of his district.
Watching teams from around the state and Canada yesterday, something dawned on me. Many of the schools have large teams, somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 members. Each of these teams only build one robot. Churchville, with fewer members build two robots. There are other jobs on the teams other than building the robots, publicity, bookkeeping, fund raising, community outreach to name a few. So there are jobs for these students. But the real reason many join is to get experience in the engineering end. How much hands on experience can you have with a large team and only one robot? When you get down to it, really there about 10 members of each team that understand and really work on these machines. What having two teams allow is more students to work on a robot, and members to help each team build and problem solve.
FIRST has been a great thing for Eric to be involved with. I have not seen him so excited about anything except when he was little and played with Thomas the Tank Engine trains. Other than these two, he has sort of been doing stuff, but not whole heartedly. I have seen his personal growth in the last few months, he has gained confidence, learned to work with others and became a leader. I have never seen this part of his personality before, and perhaps he shows it in other places, but for me to witness him in action made me proud to be his father.
I am looking forward to next season, if Eric stays on the same team, he has several other sophomores who work well together moving on with him. We all are looking forward to how this will all turn out.
My other FIRST Posts
First FIRST
Second FIRST
Third FIRST
Fourth First
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
4th FIRST post
The build season for FIRST Robotics ended last week, the robots were shipped out on Tuesday the 17th. Both teams seem to be in good shape. The challenge was interesting and I can’t wait until the competition to see how it goes. Sometimes I am confident other times, not so much. Any time there is competition I have the same feelings.
The last week of work was brutal for all involved. My wife dropped Eric off on Saturday Morning, I picked him up Sunday for him to shower, change clothes and have a nap. Dropped him back off around 6 pm, picked him up sometime Monday for a shower and new clothes, and then finally picked him up around noon on Tuesday.
It was fun to see the final changes to the robots and some of the unforeseen problems get fixed quickly. This really showed cooperation between students, and problem solving skills in action. There were few committee meetings as discussed in an earlier post.
Watching the six-week process take place, from being given the problem, to making robots to solve the problem was fascinating. I learned more about my son in that short time than I have in a while. He is becoming a leader, and a “let’s get it done” kind of guy. Needs to think things through a bit more, but he does them.
Other son decided that this was a bit intense for him, so he will not be joining next year.
Take the time and go to an event near you, or find the web cast of the events, you will be amazed by the work of these students
The last week of work was brutal for all involved. My wife dropped Eric off on Saturday Morning, I picked him up Sunday for him to shower, change clothes and have a nap. Dropped him back off around 6 pm, picked him up sometime Monday for a shower and new clothes, and then finally picked him up around noon on Tuesday.
It was fun to see the final changes to the robots and some of the unforeseen problems get fixed quickly. This really showed cooperation between students, and problem solving skills in action. There were few committee meetings as discussed in an earlier post.
Watching the six-week process take place, from being given the problem, to making robots to solve the problem was fascinating. I learned more about my son in that short time than I have in a while. He is becoming a leader, and a “let’s get it done” kind of guy. Needs to think things through a bit more, but he does them.
Other son decided that this was a bit intense for him, so he will not be joining next year.
Take the time and go to an event near you, or find the web cast of the events, you will be amazed by the work of these students
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Third FIRST post
Or how Eric discovers working in a group is sometimes not fun.
A committee is a thing which takes a week to do what one good man can do in an hour. ~Elbert Hubbard
When I went to pick up Eric from his robot building session yesterday, he seemed to be upset. Sometimes when he gets upset it is not readily apparent what happened. However I anticipated this from him at anytime, and wondered what took it so long to appear. He has had a run in with “Work by Committee” the death of any Project Based Learning activity, or any activity.
When we set up group activities in the classroom we tend to assign roles to the students, the recorder, the timekeeper, the reporter and so on. In the real world these are jobs that are voted on or occur naturally. I tend to be the person moving the agenda along and trying to get rid of extraneous conversations.
Some of the most frustrating meetings I have ever been in have involved writing a document. There are always grammar people that want to parse each sentence, and argue about punctuation. There are meetings after meetings after meetings. Then eventually I just write the document, send it out and ask for changes to be sent in within 48 hours. The job then gets done.
This is similar to what Eric ran into yesterday. After getting the drive system finished for their robot, he was asked to go over and work with the electronics group, the group that makes it so the robot can move. He was happy to do so, so he went over to their group. The electronic group was discussing, not only about the layout of electronics, but everything else in the world. Eric attempted to focus the group on the task at hand with little or no success. They did cut out a cardboard piece the size of the electronics tray, but not the components. All of this in about 4 hours of work.
He is a person that takes ownership of a project and runs with it, not one to disappear into committee so that if it works they can take credit and if it does not work, it was not their fault. He has helped his brother build his computer by reading and following directions and plugging stuff in. He is like this in most projects. I am the same way, cut out the talk and let’s get to work.
Is this a good thing to do in any group project? When does something move from a group work to “my work”? How do you move in the other direction? I have had students grade each other after finishing a project, and usually someone in the group did nothing, or two of them just sat and chatted while the others did the work. It is difficult for the let’s get moving crowd to work with discussers, but with out discussion, the design may not work.
How do you draw the line in your projects to see things get done?
A committee is a thing which takes a week to do what one good man can do in an hour. ~Elbert Hubbard
When I went to pick up Eric from his robot building session yesterday, he seemed to be upset. Sometimes when he gets upset it is not readily apparent what happened. However I anticipated this from him at anytime, and wondered what took it so long to appear. He has had a run in with “Work by Committee” the death of any Project Based Learning activity, or any activity.
When we set up group activities in the classroom we tend to assign roles to the students, the recorder, the timekeeper, the reporter and so on. In the real world these are jobs that are voted on or occur naturally. I tend to be the person moving the agenda along and trying to get rid of extraneous conversations.
Some of the most frustrating meetings I have ever been in have involved writing a document. There are always grammar people that want to parse each sentence, and argue about punctuation. There are meetings after meetings after meetings. Then eventually I just write the document, send it out and ask for changes to be sent in within 48 hours. The job then gets done.
This is similar to what Eric ran into yesterday. After getting the drive system finished for their robot, he was asked to go over and work with the electronics group, the group that makes it so the robot can move. He was happy to do so, so he went over to their group. The electronic group was discussing, not only about the layout of electronics, but everything else in the world. Eric attempted to focus the group on the task at hand with little or no success. They did cut out a cardboard piece the size of the electronics tray, but not the components. All of this in about 4 hours of work.
He is a person that takes ownership of a project and runs with it, not one to disappear into committee so that if it works they can take credit and if it does not work, it was not their fault. He has helped his brother build his computer by reading and following directions and plugging stuff in. He is like this in most projects. I am the same way, cut out the talk and let’s get to work.
Is this a good thing to do in any group project? When does something move from a group work to “my work”? How do you move in the other direction? I have had students grade each other after finishing a project, and usually someone in the group did nothing, or two of them just sat and chatted while the others did the work. It is difficult for the let’s get moving crowd to work with discussers, but with out discussion, the design may not work.
How do you draw the line in your projects to see things get done?
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Second FIRST and teams
A few posts ago I wrote about FIRST Robotics. We are now about a month away from the deadline for having the machines finished and shipped out.
Seeing the students work in a real problem-solving environment is interesting. As stated before, none of us know the “real” answer, and there may not be a real answer. My son in on the “JV” team, Team 424 there is also the “varsity” Team 340. Because team 424 is first or second year members the mentors are doing more guiding, but not making the decisions. The brainstorming is interesting to hear. Ideas are listened to and discussed. Ideas from everyone. The ideas are kicked around and modified. All of the students have input, which is greater than the input of the adults. The team is moving along with some pieces being built and others being prototyped and designed in CAD. It is enjoyable to see my son working with others and contributing to the team. This is a great thing for him to be doing. This group is doing a great job of cooperative learning.
Then there is Team 340. This team is made up of the older students and for the most part has younger mentors. The concept of team decision-making is not going on. When I looked in on them yesterday, they were still arguing about concepts and about three different factions were prototyping “their robot”. Each group was sure their idea was best, and wanted to prove it. But even in this process there was little constructive criticism in the group, just criticism. Is this going to end up as a failure? I don’t think so. This is a motivated group, and eventually they will realize they need to get going and work on a robot together, even if it is near the deadline, they will get it done.
What can I draw from these observations and connect them with PBL? How are the groups different, and how does this change the group dynamic?
Both groups have a set deadline, no excuses. If they miss the shipping date, too bad, your robot will not compete.
Both groups have been given goals for each meeting, are the goals reachable for this, yes and no, and the more experienced the group, the more they are able to think through some problems posed by the game and the robot. They have a larger knowledge base than the younger group, and hence more options.
The younger group has more mentors and the mentors are more vocal with opinions, the older group, the mentors are mostly a few years older than the students, with a similar amount of experience.
The older group is made up of a bunch of leaders, the younger group has fewer leaders and more followers.
What can be done? In a week or so, team 340 will see the time is near, and will somehow decide the best method to work. They will do a good job; some will be upset and be a drag on the team.
Do we ever expect this number of leaders on a team? Can this energy be put into various parts of the robot, working in sub-groups? That will have to happen soon. As long as the sub-groups work together.
Right now, it looks dire, but I am looking forward to how they work out their problems and move forward.
Seeing the students work in a real problem-solving environment is interesting. As stated before, none of us know the “real” answer, and there may not be a real answer. My son in on the “JV” team, Team 424 there is also the “varsity” Team 340. Because team 424 is first or second year members the mentors are doing more guiding, but not making the decisions. The brainstorming is interesting to hear. Ideas are listened to and discussed. Ideas from everyone. The ideas are kicked around and modified. All of the students have input, which is greater than the input of the adults. The team is moving along with some pieces being built and others being prototyped and designed in CAD. It is enjoyable to see my son working with others and contributing to the team. This is a great thing for him to be doing. This group is doing a great job of cooperative learning.
Then there is Team 340. This team is made up of the older students and for the most part has younger mentors. The concept of team decision-making is not going on. When I looked in on them yesterday, they were still arguing about concepts and about three different factions were prototyping “their robot”. Each group was sure their idea was best, and wanted to prove it. But even in this process there was little constructive criticism in the group, just criticism. Is this going to end up as a failure? I don’t think so. This is a motivated group, and eventually they will realize they need to get going and work on a robot together, even if it is near the deadline, they will get it done.
What can I draw from these observations and connect them with PBL? How are the groups different, and how does this change the group dynamic?
Both groups have a set deadline, no excuses. If they miss the shipping date, too bad, your robot will not compete.
Both groups have been given goals for each meeting, are the goals reachable for this, yes and no, and the more experienced the group, the more they are able to think through some problems posed by the game and the robot. They have a larger knowledge base than the younger group, and hence more options.
The younger group has more mentors and the mentors are more vocal with opinions, the older group, the mentors are mostly a few years older than the students, with a similar amount of experience.
The older group is made up of a bunch of leaders, the younger group has fewer leaders and more followers.
What can be done? In a week or so, team 340 will see the time is near, and will somehow decide the best method to work. They will do a good job; some will be upset and be a drag on the team.
Do we ever expect this number of leaders on a team? Can this energy be put into various parts of the robot, working in sub-groups? That will have to happen soon. As long as the sub-groups work together.
Right now, it looks dire, but I am looking forward to how they work out their problems and move forward.
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