Back in Robot Land

We are down in Lacrosse, Wisconsin.  The first day of action is just tuning up the robot and running practice matches.  We had only a few minor things to tweak.

Everyone is very tired.  A revived team will go at it in the morning.  Our first couple of match ups, alas, look quite difficult.

FIRST Robotics 2023 - Tournament 2.0!

In recent years Team 5826 has been a "one event" team.  It has mostly been a question of money, the transportation, lodging, registration costs of that second event have been just out of reach.  But most teams, programs really, that enjoy success do two events.  A few over achievers do three.  There are some things you only learn by doing and only learn well by doing repeatedly.

So for this season we've drawn down our reserves to Ramen Noodle levels and decided to do two events.

Our first tournament was a considerable success.  With a few more breaks, or to be honest with about 5% more focus during build season, we'd be heading to Worlds.  Playing again a month later will be a different experience.  Our robot will be better.  But so also will everyone else's.  

My status as Robot Overlord generally gives me a fairly good glimpse of the future.  I can usually tell you what a given group of students with a specific project and a known amount of resources can accomplish.  But when I got back from my most atypical Florida vacation - having missed a number of working sessions - they were doing new things.  Weird things.  "When did you program the robot to track down and grab that game piece autonomously?"  "Oh, we've been working on that a while."  They insist that several clever ideas were things they mentioned in passing several weeks ago.

I dunno, maybe they did.  We were in serious crisis rebuild mode about ten days before our first event and I might have missed a few ridiculous sounding pie in the sky concepts....

So we'll be packing up and heading off early tomorrow.  Everything seems to be ready.  And how will we do?

I'm like a Mariner in ancient times, realizing that he's sailed off the edge of the map entirely.  I don't know what happens next.

FIRST Robotics - Right Up Close

The team really does not need my dubious help these days so I'm just hanging around.  I occasionally take pictures of things that amuse me.

This is obviously deep inside the innards of our robot.  Nobody could remember the gear reduction of that winch motor!  So what to do?  There were markings - of course on the under side - and just barely enough clearance to slip a phone under and snap a pic!  Note that we've also put a heat sink on the motor....it has overheated under high stress conditions in the past.

You have to be able to quickly change your bumper color from red to blue and back again.  Our solution are these handy detent pins that clip through a piece of aluminum bolted to the frame.  The bit of elastic is a hair band.  It keeps the pin from working loose.  It is handy to have girls on the team.  Oh and one or two of our guys also have rather long hair.

Just wrong.  I was told this was just a way to keep track of the allen key set, they were not actually going to fire up the impact driver and use it.

Just a few days until our next and presumably last tournament.  So we invited two other teams to come and practice.  Real world vibes.  Many good things happened and were met with applause.  A few things broke and were fixed by contributions from many.

Here's a picture with several silly things going on.  It's fine to practice with the three robots on your side just running back and forth, but without any "traffic" much less defense it is not realistic.  So we had a trash can on wheels and a tote on a dolly.  We'd push them out into the path of the robots and make them evade.....or nudge out of the way.  In the distance is the student at the game piece drop off station.  The wooden structure in front of him rather looks like a pulpit and the arm gestures that signal a successful grab look much like a benediction!  Ave Robotum!

Tree Shaped Tombstones - Globe Arizona

On occasion one or another of my roving correspondents will send me "tree" photos from unusual places.  Places like Globe, Arizona.  It's an isolated place in the Gila valley of central Arizona, a place that hit it big with mining in the mid 1870's.  The name comes from a huge globe shaped mass of silver found there.

The desert light was harsh so these are not ideal pictures, but both the setting and the examples are intriguing.

Here's a late style "official" Woodmen marker.  Done in granite as was usually the case by the 1911 death date.  Note the dry surroundings.....no well manicured grass here.  The cement bumpers around family plots are also unusual.  Per the sign it was an IOOF cemetery.  Other lodges apparently were also welcome.  (Addendum.  Note the blue pigment in the "downhill" parts of this monument.  Globe is a serious copper mining town.  Is it in the air or something?)

Also from 1911 something I've never seen before....a tree stump drinking fountain!  I assume the little cutout at the bottom was for dogs.

And here's a couple more examples.

Oddly these monuments are both jammed into the edge of the family plot.  Why?  There appeared to be plenty of room.

In my very quick look at the history of Globe I did note that among the famous people from there was a certain Lynda Carter.  I should think that in auditions such trivia as where you are from would seldom be the subject of conversation, but if you are wearing this outfit.....maybe.

Cracker Camping

There is always something new to see when you travel.  Our last night in Florida we stayed in an uninspiring hotel whose main virtue was proximity to the airport.  Out the back door was a Cracker Barrel restaurant.  For my British friends, and for those inclined to finer dining, Cracker Barrel serves large portions of "down home cookin'" heavy on bacon, grits, waffles.  You get the idea.

And here's there parking lot, at least the one out back.

Three larger type vehicles.  Two of them are pretty pricey, a Mercedes and what I think is a Hummer.  All have dark covering over their windows.  The Benz appears to have a satellite dish on top.  So what gives?

This is a thing I guess.  People who wander here and there in vans sleeping not in campgrounds but in the parking lots of Wal Marts and Cracker Barrel restaurants.  I obviously have Questions.....they must take showers once in a while for instance.  But overall I'm happy to leave this "Van Life" thing as just an odd sighting of a different tribe.  Their ways are not my ways.

All too Clear on the Marketing Concept

 Seen in a Florida grocery store:

My first reaction was mild amusement with a bit of grudging respect.  Calling your hip packing ice cream bars FatBoy takes a bit of chutzpah.  But then I looked closer.

The regular version has 150 calories per bar the Jr. version 110.  So a box of 6 regular ones is 900 calories, the Jr. version 990.  I strongly suspect that the type of person who buys this product will be quite likely to eat two of the Juniors because they are low cal.  As such, the box of 9 will probably be gone faster than the box of six OG FatBoys.  Clever......

Florida Men Living Dangerously

Looking for alligators.  It was a chilly morning for Florida and the one we did spot was pretty sluggish.

Later in the day we were out on the fishing pier.  Wonder what's down there....

SHARK!!!!

Getting a disgruntled shark, even a smallish one, up to a pier 30 feet above the water is a complicated task.  All hands on deck to play the fish, run and get the big net on a 30 foot rope, clear all our stuff out of the way and dehook the little monster.  More than one of us will add this to our Life Time Species caught list.  Note for the compulsives among you, the specific ID on this thing is still pending......

Florida Man - Strange Fish

Florida has some great fishing.  Why you can rent a charter, go out on the ocean and catch some really swell fish.  Bah, tourist stuff.  We serious anglers are after the weird ones.                                                                                                                                                             

This trip was an opportunity for my grandson and I to both expand our Lifetime Species caught list.  We started out even up but I got a quick three species bump because fish I'd previously caught in Florida were now countable.  I have no doubt he'll overtake me but so far our new catches have me still a couple ahead.

This is a Mojarra.  Or at least a variety of same.

And here's a Blue Runner.  Not that interesting to look at but when caught they make remarkable grunting noises.  I told my grandson that it was promising us to grant a small wish if we let him go.  

We had a long discussion as to whether non fish catches should be on the Lifetime list.  The conclusion was no, because once you allow in crustaceans it is hard to exclude random bugs.  So here's a nasty crab.

Although not part of the official Salt Water Strange Fish challenge my son caught some new species as well.  This is a snook.  I had one on briefly, they are quite fun.

If you are paying close attention you might notice that we are not on a scenic Florida beach.  No, in true Florida Man - and Florida Boy - style we spent a lot of time fishing under a bridge that was adjacent to a drinking establishment.  

Late addition.  This is a Sheepshead.  The salt water version not the freshwater critter we have back home.  Three new species for me on this trip.  Not bad.

Florida Man - Shark Tooth

An atypical late winter escape for us.  Off to Florida with assorted family and friends.  Here's the end of the day...

People just go to the beach to watch the sun go down.  I could get used to that.

But a good part of the day was spent doing this:

The place we are at is apparently the fossil shark tooth capitol of the world.  Why there are so many of these in the sand I cannot say.  But if you sift and sort enough broken up shells, you find them.

I figured I would be really good at this.  When I am on an archeology dig I have an excellent "eye" and often spot things missed by others.  So why did I struggle with these?

I had to think on this a bit.  I guess its because much of the business of spotting artifacts is being able to tell the difference between natural and man made objects.  Certain shapes, colors, textures just don't occur naturally and you learn these quickly.  In shark tooth hunting you are just trying to pick one sort of natural world object out of big piles of other objects.  So if archaeology is sometimes looking for the needle in the haystack, this sort of work is looking through a haystack for a slightly different piece of hay!

Giant Expectations Met

Giant Expectations.  Certainly the best mockumentary of a winter semi-sport ever to be crafted by a Fisheries Biologist.  Now available in its entirety on Youtube.  A thought provoking bit of modern cinema that raises many questions.  Chief among them:  "Why?  Just......why?"

Backstage at the Movies

Next month I'm giving a program on historic movie theaters.  Just for fun it will be given in a modern movie theater....with popcorn and a few relevant silent movie offerings.  

Did a recon trip the other day to make sure various media can interact electronically.  I'd never been up in the "working spaces" of a theater before.  All sorts of interesting things.

Posters everywhere.  They had plenty on the walls and racks and racks of old ones.

All the space up top is one long room.  Movie projectors - that large object in the right foreground is one - are aiming to the left and right as you go by.  I learned many things.  For instance, in times past you had to have a projectionist.  It was a pretty high paying union job.  It was needed because film rolls were fairly short and you had to be ready to swap in the next one.  Also because projectors would get stuck, and film melts and/or starts to burn pretty quickly.  At least in the old days.  Now projectionists are no longer needed.

I was curious about this device.  I should have put a hand in the photo to give scale but these things are huge, perhaps three feet across.  These turntables were for gigantic reels that were spliced together into one long feature film length behemoth.  A first step towards eliminating humans up in the projection booth.

Now its all digital.  Satellites high overhead send a stream of Hollywood crafted 1's and 0's down to be formed into images.  

FIRST Robotics 2023 - Tournament Time 1.0

A very memorable robotics tournament in Duluth for team 5826.  I considered writing something pseudo fictional in the form of me pitching an improbable movie plot to a studio but that would detract from what the students did.  Which actually is more impressive than me attempting to write clever things.

We have a very good team.  Our resources are just OK so we have to make the most of them.  The decisions made early on in the design process got us a robot that was mechanically perfect to play this game in an early event scenario.  Fast, maneuverable, does not drop things.  And our initial autonomous sequence was so good that in many matches we started out with a hefty lead that our opponents had to scramble to match.  It is difficult for them to play defense on us while also trying to play offense and score points.

So with just a few more pieces of the puzzle we could have blown through the qualification rounds in fine shape.  But there were gremlins.  Odd events in which the robot would freeze up for either a few seconds or until our radio rebooted.  We lost our first match due to a very avoidable issue (laptop overheated!) then went on a run of wins that put us up as high as 3rd place in a 60 robot field.

But the gremlins were persistent.  One match we lost because our wheels had worn down their treads.  But we replaced them and were again doing well.  We finished at 14th.  Pretty good considering the early hiccups.  

In FIRST the eight top finishers get to each pick two alliance partners to go into the elimination rounds.  We went unpicked until near the end, which put us on the number two alliance.  This is fair, if you don't know how reliable a partner is you go looking for less flashy but more durable options.

And.....early in the elim rounds we just died.  That was embarrassing.

The issue was vague.  In some fashion the motors were pulling so much current that the control system browned out.  Eventually one motor pulled so much it melted.  But we did not have this figured out at the point where the matches had to continue.  So we told our alliance captain to go with the established procedure and call up a stand by substitute robot.

Our team kept working on it....just out of curiosity.  Various event officials who knew the control system well also came by.  Most teams were already packed up and out of competition, they probably just wanted something to do.

The root cause was identified.   It would be hard for me to describe it as the place where hardware and software interact is a netherworld.  In earlier days people so affected would be considered possessed by demons.  It may still be so with machines....   But they exorcized the demon, did a quick functionality test, and we were again Live.

Out of politeness we informed the alliance captain but suggested he should keep running with the substitute robot.  But, if anything happened to it we were ready.

Something happened to it.

There was a very quick conference.  "Are you sure it works?"  We said yes.  "Can you prove it will hold up to some impacts?"  We asked if they'd like us to crash it into a wall for them to prove viability.  "Yes, please".

Onto the practice field.  Bang.  BANG.  At this point I said "C'mon, is that all ya got?"   BANG!  

At this point the representative from our Alliance Captain got a very odd look on his face and took off at a dead run to the area where their team was staging.

A few minutes later we were playing in the Final match.  Now I'm not bragging here but we more than carried our weight in the game play.  And in the final end game where we needed three robots to all balance on a narrow teeter totter we got up there, leaned dangerously over the edge, held our breath.....and got nudged off with one second to go.  Here, see if I am exaggerating....SO DARN CLOSE!

And so we missed a shot at Worlds by a quarter inch or a couple seconds.

Honestly, you can't make this stuff up.  Second place is fine.  A trophy, medals for everyone.  One of our team members also won a very prestigious individual award.  And the silly goat video we made for FIRST to use as a time filler at events premiered just before the final dramatic match.

Oh.....and we play again in four weeks......

In Robot Land

Regular posting suspended while we are at a major robotics competition in Duluth.  We are team 5826.  Fun to watch the matches in near real time.   See the link:

  It's Robot Time

In practice matches today we broke and fixed various minor things.  We look to be a somewhat above average machine but have tough match ups early.  We'll win some and, well.....

Anyway, we'll be putting it all out on the floor starting at 9am.

FIRST Robotics - a few silly things from the season

One day I had to move the robot, practice robot and field elements from one building to another.  This is not ideal packing but it was only a few blocks on a nice winter day.  Jed Clampett Movers.

Its a long story but our team now has a huge box of duct tape.  Multi year supply.  You find it all over our workspace now.

Field element and game pieces stacked to form some kind of idol or totem.  The cryptic logo on the front is basically a tag that the robot can read and center on.

 

We have one person driving the machine and another who operates the arm.  Said arm has multiple preset positions.  Push the button and the arm goes to the correct location.  Here's version 1.0 of the button module.  Note the button spot on the upper left....

The final version left this off.  FIRST has some traces of humor but does not approve of anything destructive.....