Crusaderbots

This is a post by Crusaderbot mentor Janna Spicer

Can you believe it’s nearly the end of Week 6 already?How did the time fly by so fast?

This is my first season mentoring a FIRST Robotics team, and I’ve had the privilege to be a part of the Jesuit Crusaderbots. Since I haven’t mentored before, I don’t know how unusual this is – but I think that the Crusaderbots really embody some of the most important parts of FIRST – gracious professionalism, coopertition, and certainly HARD FUN.

Although I work a full time job as a Program Manager at Autodesk, this team has welcomed the small chunks of time I’ve been able to participate with open arms.  They meet nearly every day, and they are so focused and positive at working toward the goal.  I’m amazed at some of the technology these young high school students are mastering: from Software programming in Java and C, Electrical systems (power and control systems), and CAD – using Autodesk Inventor (selfishly, I must say yay!). But I think perhaps this team’s biggest competitive advantage is their Leadership Team.  This is a small team of experienced students, each taking a lead role in the major functions of the team. They are responsible for making sure that their sub-team is working well together, on track per the overall schedule, and most of all – training the rookies.  This not only builds a great team environment that’s inclusive and fun to be a part of, it also ensures sustainability of the hard work their predecessors have done – keeping the team alive, year after year.

I think every mentor must have a long list of things they are proud of their team for, and I’m no different. And when I initially got connected with FIRST, I nostalgically wished that I’d had this opportunity when I was in high school. But now, I look forward to ensuring that FRC is alive for as many students as possible. And the Crusaderbots are doing their part to achieve that goal.

Good luck this season to my ‘bots and all the FRC teams! I’ll see you at the Autodesk Oregon Regional – I’ll be the one with the huge grin, and a tremendous sense of pride for my team – just like you!

Janna Spicer
Program Manager, Mechanical Design Product Line Group
Autodesk, Inc.

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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