1st Week Adventures

Welcome back, everyone!

Hello again everyone! Today I’ll be following up Sunday’s kickoff post with a little progress check on each subgroup as of the first week of kickoff!

First up: Business. Business has been… well… busy for the first week, searching for new sponsors, looking for outreach events to enlarge our robotics team, creating and adjusting merchandise, and, of course, making posts about our events throughout the week. Business member Anthony has been reaching out to farmers markets all around Texas to find open stands to spread the word of robotics with. Meanwhile, Lina has been hard at work learning how to use and take photos with the cameras, that way come competition season we have plenty of material to work with.

But or kind of material isn’t that useful for actually making robots. That’s where Manufacturing comes in: throughout the first week, Manufacturing has started work on the court in which the game takes place in since they don’t have any concrete prototypes or designs created by the CAD team yet. They’ve made the terminals, where players load balls into the robot, and the hub, where the robots must shoot the ball up into in order to score points. In the future, they aim to create the ladder climb, where robots latch onto a monkey-bar like structure to gain huge amounts of points close to the end of the game.

Meanwhile, CAD works to create functioning mechanisms and components for the robot, such as a working drive base that can accurately lug a huge chunk of metal around the court attached to a bluetooth controller that has commands for the robot. They’ve also started work on prototyping models for the robot to ensure that the weight is evenly distributed and has accurate measurements for each of its parts.

However, even if the robot is perfectly calibrated in measurements, a lacking job in coding can cause the entire machine to fail. Programming has started work on the internal commands within the robot, such as the intake programs and the commands needed to link the robots movements to the wheels and their motors. They’ve accomplished the most out of every group, and they plan to go even further beyond to now delve into the programming of more specific functions, like the ladder climber and various other subsystems.

Overall, the first week after kickoff has acted as one of the most influential times in planning and creating the robot and related systems. This time has been a massive influence on the team mood of this season and we plan to keep the momentum going throughout the 2022 Build Season. ausTIN CANs out!

To be continued…

An ausTIN CAN's Kickoff

WELCOME BACK, EVERYONE!

Welcome back to the ausTIN CANs blog! Over the weekend, we celebrated kickoff, the annual event where this build season’s game is unveiled and the team are informed of what type of robot they must build over the next two months. It ended up being “Rapid React”, where alliances of three robots are pitted against each other in a hoop-shooting game with oversized tennis balls. As a result, the team ran to the meeting room in small groups to review the rules and start building mental images of how rounds will go.

For example, students broke off into 4 groups of around 10 and worked together with their mentors and their fellow students to review the newly released rules of the game, then reconvened to share what they found that others might have missed. After this, students were tested ruthlessly to confirm they knew what they could and could not do within the limitations of the game.

Afterwards, the team broke back up and headed to the foyer to grab some lunch donated by our very gracious chaperones who donated some eats to our ravenous team. We got time to chat, relax, and take a break before going back in to talk strategy.

At the end of the day, the robotics club gathered in the classroom to talk strategy about the upcoming games. First: we gathered the amounts of points given for each action so we could establish priorities for our robot during the autonomous section of each round. After that, we made a list of our robot’s mechanisms and decided on each one’s level of importance so we can confirm our bot will be fully functional come competition. Then, the team was released to go home and sleep on their ideas.

The next day, students returned to the lab and started to talk mechanics. We discussed the essentials needed to maintain a shooter, so we can toss the balls into the hub, and a climber, required for the endgame of each tournament where robots are suggested to climb across a monkey bars-like structure for more points to hopefully win the match. We also discussed other parts, such as the ball intake system and the mechanisms required to carry the ball up into the shooter.

Overall, kickoff was an educational and enjoyable event for all of the team, and we couldn’t be more happy with the turnout. See you next time on…

THE AUSTIN CANS!

CAN Drive Now Available!

Hey Folks!

As of this post, the ausTIN CAN’s drive is now public. Below is a link to go check out all of the inner workings of our team: look at it! …If you’re into that. I CAN’t make you.

Robotics is Back in Style!

Well, folks… It’s that time of year!

Welcome back to the ausTIN CANs blog! In our first post of this year, we’ll be covering the hottest event on the robotics block: Night of the Robots! Night of the Robots (or NotR, for short) happened this past Friday and the robotics crew couldn’t be any more pleased with the results! The event had a wide range of events, including a Lego building station for those who can’t wait to get their hands on the wrench, a programming demo for young learners aiming to make a difference through code, and of course, a robot demo showing our metallic friends in action!

“The best part of Night of the Robots was definitely watching the kids enjoy themselves,”

The event was more than just a job demo, though, as these young entrepreneurs also had the opportunity to talk with similar-minded children with the same interests and meet members of our well-known robotics team to ask some questions! In fact, the team seems to have a unified opinion of the best part of the event: the kids. As programmer Zain J puts it, “The best part of Night of the Robots was definitely watching the kids enjoy themselves,” and out of the members I interviewed this seemed to be a common favorite. Eli M of the CAD subgroup specifically recounts meeting a child with previous experience, who he says “…already knew how to code, so it was nice teaching him the ins and outs of the experience!”

But with upwards of 40 young minds to please, the team had a lot to fulfill. However, it seems the result was spectacular, with Jackson A explaining, “The variety of the events was awesome, especially getting to see the kids enjoy them alongside us.” Zane B agrees with this sentiment, stating “[the events] were fun!”

Overall, it appears that NotR was a massive success, and everyone on team agrees. With that, the ausTIN CANs bids you adieu, but not for long! We hope to see you again soon!

Robotics is Recharged Up!

Hey folks! Robotics is back, and the ausTIN CANs are hard at work, both in the shop and online. While the programming, business, and CAD departments are working virtually, the manufacturing department is working in person, and using masks and hand sanitizer to their fullest extent. In order to stay safe in the shop, only a certain amount of students are allowed in at a time, and each student is required to wear a mask. The ausTIN CANs are safely carrying out social distancing, even in their in-person work.

During the first week back to robotics, the manufacturing department discussed shop safety and learned how to use a caliper. They also cleaned and organized the shop, and this week the department trained on the metal lathe and learned the basics of TIG welding. The business department has gotten to work on brainstorming social-distance complying fundraising events, as well as worked on learning how to use graphic design programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator.

The manufacturing and business departments aren’t the only ones working hard, though. The programming department has started learning Java, and are creating example projects to control motors for a climbing subsystem, which they will be testing using the desktop robot simulator. On top of that, the CAD department has been learning Autodesk Fusion 360, where they began with basic sketches and projecting geometry. This week, they’ve moved on to more advanced CAD techniques, such as sketches in 3D space, sweeps, revolves, and using flanges. Go CANs!

The ausTIN CANs are looking forward to the upcoming season. We’ve already starting planning upcoming events and fundraisers, and a parent meeting will be happening on October 21st, Wednesday, at 7pm. We hope to see you all there!

Good Day to be a CAN

Teams 2158C, P, B, D, and E all attended McCallum High School for their Tournament. Team 2158C won 8 of 8 matches in qualifications and went on to win the tournament, as well as Robot Skills Champion and Excellence. Team 2158P qualified for States due to their second place in Robot Skills.

Our VEXU team SUB0, consisting of two of our own mentors, competed last Saturday at the South Texas qualifier. They started the day off strong ranking 1st and finished the day with a match record of 7-1  and trophies for both Tournament Champions and Robot Skills Champions.

Congratulations to team 2158C, 2158P and SUB0 for their wins and all the teams that participated.

Build Season Wrap-Up

Here we are 7 weeks into our build season and not a single thing was done.

Just pulling your tail! We got a robot almost done. Almost every veteran has pointed out that this is the cleanest and best packed robot they’ve made/seen. That’s a great compliment for the CAD team to hear since they’ve spent hours trying to figure out how to package this year’s bot. Because going short was decided to be the best strategy, we now face the challenges to fit every component below the 28” limit of the control panel. Most of the mechanisms are finalized, the shooter is getting fabricated today and our bellypan needs to be adjusted to account for our gearboxes. Other than these adjustments which should be finalized by tonight, everything needs to be assembled!

It’s been a busy time for the team in assembly. If members of CAD, manufacturing and programming are “not busy on a project” they are tasked with parts of assembly. This helps the members be updated on the final robot and not out of the loop. With them having “built” a piece of the robot, no matter what subgroup they are on, they have a piece of the robot that they put together. This way, we have programmers and CAD know the mechanisms they work on, not only the code or design involved in the mechanisms!

We have two weeks left before Del Rio and we are in high gear!

We hope to see y’all there!