Renewed Optimism, as Well as Confusion

Goals:
+ Maintain blog up-to-date
+ Complete the robot arm challenge

The "robot arm challenge" goal is not very specific, so I'll elaborate briefly. We need to create some pyramids out of straws, create an arm for our robot, and have the arm be capable of picking the pyramids up and putting them on a rack. If we succeed in putting 3 pyramids on the topmost rack, then we will receive the best grade possible. It is our hope that we can accomplish this as soon as possible, due to our previous setbacks and not being behind the other teams.

This part of the project has me a bit stumped, honestly, but we can do this! We have to...

The rack with some pyramids hanging off of it

Runnin' Out of Titles!

Accomplishments:

+ Programmed Controller
+ Completed two laps around the chairs

This week was one of those testing weeks. We worked hard on Monday but didn't have school on Tuesday and Wednesday. This Thursday there was only one person from this group in attendance. He put the controller battery to charge and did a little bit of maintenance on the robot. What happens on Friday is still unknown since it has not happened yet. There is sophomore testing on this Friday so He might be alone again.

 I'm not sure we'll have the time to give it an awesome arm so we failed in that section of the robot. But we are sure of this, we'll have a an RC toy car ready by the end of this school year!

Sammyr, working on this very same blog post! Inception!

YAY!

Goal:

+ Program the controller so we can move the robot with it

Things are finally picking up the pace! We completed the two laps around the chairs using autonomous mode! This week we'll be working hard too, and hope that everyone will cheer us on! I'm in high spirits, for once. Optimism really is a renewable resource, huh?

Our cool new expanded work area!

One Lap

Accomplished:
+ One lap around chairs

What our group got done this week is manage to cleanly make our robot complete one full lap. All we need now is for it to do it multiple times and then try and finish up the portable controller programming. We could have done more this week, but with all the important school testing and class relocation we couldn't do much. The controller is our next goal.

The controller, which we will be focusing on next week

Back at It

Goal:

+ Finally finish the laps!


After an entire week in the portables in the back of the school, we've finally come back to working on our  little robot. We took beneficial advice from Mr. Martin regarding the course of Weyoun ( this is how Karen names it). Anyways, he informed us that the robot should move a large distance around the double chairs. This would lower the failure chance of it not working.

The chairs we need to do two laps around can be seen in the distance

Lost Week

Accomplished this week:

+ A bit more of the coding done

This week has been strange. The only day we did anything, really, was Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday were all-testing days, and today and Thursday we were in the portable. So, nothing much got done. Sigh. This... isn't good.

Tools we needed this week and did not have

End of Another Week

Accomplished:

+ Were able to charge enough batteries to keep us working
+ Able to program a bit more

This progress may not seem like much, but to us it is precious. When you've had a quarter (and semester?) as filled with setbacks and bad luck as we have, ANY progress is welcome. There don't seem to be enough programming cables for all of the teams, which leads to a lot of consternation... All we can do is keep on working.

Weyoun, a very relaxed and irritating robot