We had a great, awesome, and educational time at the Vex Robotics World Championship! And it would not have been possible without our sponsors, Concord and WPI Apartments! We finished well, seeded 18th out of 76 teams in our division, and the 16th team to make it to the elimination rounds! We learned about last minute programming, having written custom autonomous routines for two of our matches, time management, and reliability testing!
Thank you sponsors!
Tao
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Saturday, April 26, 2014
Made the quarterfinals!
Today the team was in the Spirit division quarter finals, with alliance partners The Robot Blasters (2177C) from Wisconsin and Isotonic (8065B) from Singapore. Unfortunately they were eliminated from the competition after their loss to the first seed alliance, made up of three teams from Shanghai. We are really proud of the boys and so grateful that we have had the opportunity to have this experience together. Thank you everybody for your well wishes and encouragement, and thank you to Pete for documenting the event so beautifully on the blog and thank you to Mary for managing the team with pinache and thank you thank you thank you to our sponsors Concord and WPI Apartments for making this all possible.
Ellie
Thanks to everyone
The competition was tough and everyone did their best. Looks like last year's world champ Shanghai will likely win again.
You win some and you lose some
By Peter
Since the boys are busy, I'm posting a summary of yesterday's action. In the morning everything went smoothly and luck was on our side. For a few hours there, the team was ranked #1 in Spirit division. By the end of the day, almost every team had lost a match, with the exception of 8192A Shanghai Huangpu A and 35B Stark Industries which had 1 tie.
The first loss yesterday was a mixture of "things you hope doesn't happen." The other team fell over with 3 buckyballs, which meant those were out of play. When seconds matter, it meant the other alliance had time to fill both goals. To make things worse, the battery malfunctioned. Every team keeps a bank of batteries charging at all times, but batteries do fail. You just hope it doesn't happen during a match and only does it during practice.
The second loss was a combination of strong opponent and over heating. During the autonomous phase, the motor ends up running hot. The VEX motors are designed to shut down if it over heats to prevent permanent damage. When the opponents are strong, any jousting causes more heat build up. As a result, the motors may stop functioning in the middle of a match. The boys changed their autonomous program to reduce over heating. Hopefully that will do the trick.
The team is currently ranked 6 and the first match is against the 4th and 5th ranked teams. The super sonic sparks and justice league are solid teams. It won't be easy and a bit of luck can't hurt. I hope none of the robots malfunction and we see a great match.
From my experience programming and building complex systems, often things don't go your way. It's not that we "the programmers" aren't trying hard enough. Sometimes things are beyond our control. Often we try to solve the wrong problem or mis-diagnose the bug. Other times your opponent simply executed better and did a better job. At the end though, the key is learning from every experience and improving yourself.
The two remaining qualifier matches today in pacific time:
9:59 am
10:52 am
Playoffs start at 12:30
Finals 4:00
live stream 2014-vrwc-spirit-ms
Thanks to all the friends and families for cheering on the boys.
Since the boys are busy, I'm posting a summary of yesterday's action. In the morning everything went smoothly and luck was on our side. For a few hours there, the team was ranked #1 in Spirit division. By the end of the day, almost every team had lost a match, with the exception of 8192A Shanghai Huangpu A and 35B Stark Industries which had 1 tie.
The first loss yesterday was a mixture of "things you hope doesn't happen." The other team fell over with 3 buckyballs, which meant those were out of play. When seconds matter, it meant the other alliance had time to fill both goals. To make things worse, the battery malfunctioned. Every team keeps a bank of batteries charging at all times, but batteries do fail. You just hope it doesn't happen during a match and only does it during practice.
The second loss was a combination of strong opponent and over heating. During the autonomous phase, the motor ends up running hot. The VEX motors are designed to shut down if it over heats to prevent permanent damage. When the opponents are strong, any jousting causes more heat build up. As a result, the motors may stop functioning in the middle of a match. The boys changed their autonomous program to reduce over heating. Hopefully that will do the trick.
The team is currently ranked 6 and the first match is against the 4th and 5th ranked teams. The super sonic sparks and justice league are solid teams. It won't be easy and a bit of luck can't hurt. I hope none of the robots malfunction and we see a great match.
From my experience programming and building complex systems, often things don't go your way. It's not that we "the programmers" aren't trying hard enough. Sometimes things are beyond our control. Often we try to solve the wrong problem or mis-diagnose the bug. Other times your opponent simply executed better and did a better job. At the end though, the key is learning from every experience and improving yourself.
The two remaining qualifier matches today in pacific time:
9:59 am
10:52 am
Playoffs start at 12:30
Finals 4:00
live stream 2014-vrwc-spirit-ms
Thanks to all the friends and families for cheering on the boys.
Friday, April 25, 2014
Tony hawk is cool and next year's game revealed
High rid
Tony hawk the man that help make skating cool
Robot modified
At the competition, we found that the large beach balls were inflated to an inch or two larger than at most tournaments. This caused our robot to be unable to pick them up easily. We spent a few hours of our day moving them farther apart to allow for the larger balls.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
ScoutSavent is now live
ScoutSavant should be available on appstore now.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scoutsavant/id857138884?ls=1&mt=8
I hope other people find it useful.
peter lin
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scoutsavant/id857138884?ls=1&mt=8
I hope other people find it useful.
peter lin
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
More pictures
The vex drone is where middle school battles
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