Author Archives: Zuhair

At the end of Friday of the Seattle Cascade Regional, we were ranked 21st, 6th highest in total hybrid points (the vast majority of which we scored),  and had the eighth highest Offensive Power Ranking (OPR). We rarely missed a shot. Despite having a tough schedule that faced us against eventual champions 2471, 2046, and 492, and never with them, we held out on our own, often with little assistance from alliance members or co-op partners.

And we didn’t get picked for eliminations.

To say the Crusaderbots are bummed out would be an under-exaggeration. We know it’s not about winning or losing, but now building 2 identical robots, perfecting an auto-aiming turret, and practicing for nearly 100 man hours goes unrecognized. There’s nothing to show that we did in fact have an awesome robot. It feels like it’s no better than last year’s Robespierre, which stood as the perfect example of what not to do.

We knew what we could fix after the Oregon Regional. We don’t know what we could have done differently after this one.

Maybe I’ll think of something better later, but the only takeaway I got from this regional is “Better luck next year”

That’s how most of us spent our short but long week in the shop. With finals and an unfound snow scare, we were only able to meet on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. With a half day as well as a day off, the most dedicated among us spent over twenty hours in the shop.
In those twenty hours, we got more than a week’s worth of work done. The pitching wheel team (ie Brian) restarted their prototype, even better than the original. Not only powerful with its double wheel on one side, it is consistent as well. Here’s what we got working on Friday morning:

While the pitcher team worked on their prototype, the mechanical department got to work on machining parts for the chassis while the CAD team worked on the CAD for the pitcher, incorporating ideas from the prototype. We got an assembly line of sorts running, as part drawings passed from “station” to “station.” If we keep up the pace, and hopefully avoid mistakes, we should be able to finish two robots right on schedule. The field elements team finally completed the backboards and plans to start the bridge next week.

Software also kept itself busy, even without a robot to test on. Shivani finally got the Classmate and the cRIO re-imaged and updated after countless troubles. John and Ananth have been hard at work getting vision targeting to work for auto-aiming.

As for myself, I’ve dedicated myself to perfecting the website. The homepage got a slight makeover and now includes rankings for the five people who have spent the most time in the shop. We’re all hoping the friendly competition doesn’t become unfriendly.

30 Days to Stop Build Day!

After the unveiling of this year’s game, Rebound Rumble, all of us got right to work. With Kit of Parts in stow, we headed right back to the shop following Kickoff to begin strategizing and planning for the season ahead.

At the lab, the team gathered together to read through all the rules for Rebound Rumble. Thankfully the Game Design Committee decided to make the rules really simple and short, so we were able to breeze through in an hour.

After a wonderful lunch provided by the parents, we got straight to work on strategy. Small groups brainstormed ideas of what it takes to win the game. My group worked out a crude cost-benefit analysis of shooting and balancing on the board. Afterwards, the entire team assembled to share their findings.

After much discussion, we broke up again for a discussion about manipulators we could use. Groups argued about close or far range shooting, as well as how to get the robot to balance on the bridges. We gathered up all the groups ideas and filtered them down to the top six viable ideas.

Everyone ranked the manipulators, and we decided to prototype the top 3: a pitcher, a piston cannon, and a spring cannon. Let’s see how those turn out….

I guess this is my first formal introduction to the world. You may notice that my title, Chief Operating Officer, seems a little different. I decided to move from Software lead and use the experience to lead the team. The title itself – COO and the related Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) are new positions that reflect the organizational changes we made at the end of last year.

The Systems Engineer position took too much responsibility which can be hard to manage for a high school student. Hence the change. My duties encompass communications and project and resource management, like time, labor, and materials. Finance and marketing were split off into the CAO position. A lot of design was offloaded to the Mechanical, Electrical, and Software departments, with me acting as an intermediary.

This year has already got off to a great start, as we invite our new mentors, Janna Spicer and Amy Silverman from Autodesk and Chris Federicks from Williams Controls.

I’ll be sure to keep this Build Blog up to date as we progress through BunnyBots and more importantly, the build season (66 days left!).

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