FIRST Robotics 2025 - End of Season Left Overs

I take a lot of pictures during the robotics campaign.  Some are good, some lousy, some I can't even remember why I took 'em.  Here's a random batch....

Robot mascots.  Always fun.  This giant robot seems pretty happy go lucky.

These guys not so much.  But I do like the giant shoes and the fake cardboard "abs" on them.  

The Hammer of Persuasion.  In this fancier age where most of the holes are made with a computer operated precision cnc machine it's mostly for show now.

I probably showed these little protective caps before.  They served us well.  In one match a hard game piece fell about six feet and bounced off of this instead of clobbering the delicate electronics underneath.  Time and a few precious ounces well spent.

The first event really wiped me out.  Days on end with pulsing strobe lights and pounding music.  And at that one I actually had to think too, being a Judge and all.  For the second event just light hearted field reset.  Had my headphones on a lot and closed my eyes sometimes.  Here's the light show....and this was before the event even started!

Ouch.

Next up, we tidy up the shop and put the robot to bed for a while.  Not a long while though, we have lots of outreach and sponsor visits to attend to.  Stay tuned.

History Underfoot

A fun talk for the local community ed program.  History Underfoot looks at how archaeology can help us fill in the gaps in historical information...and sometimes correct errors.  I enjoyed dusting off artifacts and documentation from digs many years ago...

Whiskey flasks with eagles, flags and prospectors...

Doorknobs, marked bricks, crockery, assorted metal bits and bobs...

And china dolls.  Complete with moveable, now removed, creepy eyes....

Watching you..........

Oxymoron

Put this in the category of words that surprise me.  Oxymoron is a term somewhat in decline.  It is in some ways a more polite age.  Referring to someone as a moron is considered bad manners.  Except in heated political discussions of course.

But it got me wondering.  What does oxygen have to do with morons?  No, not like this....

The term refers to a seeming contradiction.  Pick your own examples but the one that got me pondering this was "political science".  Politics has plenty of emotion and conniving.  Science?  Not so much.

So here's the story.

Oxymoron is a surprisingly old word (1650's) and is an example of itself!  It comes to us by the combination of two Greek words, oxys and moros.  Moros of course means "stupid".  It has survived intact from ancient times with the occasional flourish such as Bugs Bunny's Bronxian euphemism "What a Maroon".  

Oxys means sharp.  So combining Sharp and Dull in one word creates the implicit contradiction that defines an oxymoron.

So where does oxygen come into all this?

It actually wandered in late.  Once chemistry emerged from the mystical alchemy days there was quite the effort to define and explain things.  A couple of chemists discovered oxygen at about the same time in the late 1770's, with a Joseph Priestly referring to it as "dephlogisticated air".  Phlogiston was a hypothetical fire-like substance felt to be present in matter.  It all dates back to the Ancient Greeks who had this notion of the universe being made of earth, wind, fire....and water.   Priestly and company had not quite shaken off the Alchemist era I guess.

A Frenchman named Antoine Levasseur proposed the alternate name Oxygen.  He believed that this new stuff was essential in the formation of all acidic compounds.  Oxys as it happens had alternate meanings to the Greeks.  Sharp, sour, acidic all in one word.  One must assume they had a few amphorae of wine go bad on them.

The people who had started using oxymoron over a century earlier had no concept of oxygen at all.

So go ahead, use oxymoron any way you like.  It can mean Sharp/Stupid or Sour/Stupid.  The latter is more common in all ages of history but the former a more useful rhetorical device.

By the way, Priestly's biography is pretty wild stuff.  Invented carbonated water and helped found Unitarianism.  Supported French and American Revolutions.  A mob burned down his house house in England and he had to flee to America.  

FIRST Robotics 2025 - End of Season

As I've mentioned, our robotics season has had some challenges.  The kids probably bit off more than they could chew regards mechanical and software complexity, resulting in a 3-6 record at our first event.  On the positive side of the ledger, the sheer audacity of what they were attempting was recognized with a special Judge's Award.

In the following weeks the team worked very hard, even over spring break, and basically solved all the technical issues.  We went into the second event feeling quite a bit more confident.

Snazzy lookin' robot and custom designed and fabricated control board.  

And the robot delivered.

That's us lined up in the far position.  This was before our last match.  We'd made it through the qualification rounds with a 7-2 record, best in team history.  As the number 4 alliance captain we picked two other robots that complimented our abilities.  We won our first match, but went up against the number 1 alliance in the second round.  The better team won.  In a double elimination format it is two and out.  Alas.......for this all important match one of our alliance partners broke down with no time to repair.  A fill in from the available robots was hastily thrown out there.......and also broke.  Yep.  The robot in the foreground stayed in that spot the entire match.  At this level of competition you can't win with 2 vs 3.  

I had a perfect seat for the whole show.  Field reset is a fun gig.  Kick back, watch the action, then go our and replace those pipes and dodge balls where they belong.  I was working with fun people.

Yes, a few of the game pieces got clobbered by high speed interactions with robots.....

There are lots of fun matches to go back and watch.  Maybe we liked this one the most.  The second year in a row where we defeated the number one ranked robot.  Perhaps we enjoyed doing this just a little too much?  And for the second year in a row?  Nah, we also won the Gracious Professionalism award....for the second year in a row.  Grace in adversity and class in victory....

In watching the video you don't really have to understand the rules.  Suffice to say we are in blue bumpers with number 5826, and are variously referred to a Avis or Avis Automata.

FIRST Robotics 2025 - Going pretty well...

A full day of field reset duties at the FIRST robotics tournament.  I learned some things from my previous arena side gig up at Duluth....the noise, strobe lights, general excitement in the air can be very tiring.  So....

Hearing protection.  Necessary as my station is right in front of a big speaker.  Not shown, comfortable shoes and a full water bottle.  Feeling far more human.

The team is doing rather well at the moment.  Here's a nice match from late in the day:

More robot stuff tomorrow, but it will likely be Monday before I can post more updates.

Tournament Time. Again.

Just finished up our practice day at the second robotics tournament.  We are down in Lacrosse, one of our favorite places to compete.

The robot is happier, and should do better than last time.  It's solid and the programmers have dialed things in better.

My view of things is different this time.  I'm volunteering as Field Reset, a job that basically involved collecting up all the game pieces the robots have put here and there - on purpose or by accident - and getting them back in the right spots to start another match.

Here's a few pictures of our day.  

This is the field from way up high, before the action starts.

Here's ground level.  The game pieces are those big green bouncy balls and those hard PVC pipe sections.

Sometimes the robots have issues.  The stray parts found on the field are put in this box.

And here's the team set up for a practice match.

How will we do tomorrow when the real matches begin?

Multifunctional Robot

Just a day or so before it is robot tournament time again.  Complicating things is a blizzard that will roar through right in the time window we need to travel.  Late season blizzards, yuck.

We've gotten the robot as ready as can be:

It's been a long haul this season.  We've never attempted a robot with this level of automation on board.  When it works, it is quite something to see.  A bit scary to be honest, it slams those game pieces down with a degree of emphasis that borders on brutality.

Hope nothing jogs loose on the slow, slippery road to Lacrosse.....

Homesteading. Again?

Well, not exactly. 

Not looking to live on it, but we've recently become part owners of some land.  

So, why?  What's it good for?

Well, hunting land.  Bit of an off year 2024, in part due to a shortage of public land tags.  This location specifically, and the private land tags generally, are less problematic.  It comes with a variety of tree stands - and one hunting tree house! - already in place.

Firewood.

Blackberries.

Looks like a few spots to catch frogs.

A place for grand kids to play.  Lots of fun for them now, and when the grandies are teenagers.....hmmm, wait a minute.....  Oh, let their parents worry about parties in the woods.

A place for dogs to run around.

As an investment land has always had going for it that "they ain't makin' any more", and this should be a better bet than trying to figure our the stock market....or whatever the heck crypto currency actually is!

Not expecting to build an off grid house and live there, but maybe if the economy really tanks I could probably get by on a diet of blackberries, venison and frogs.

 

FIRST Robotics 2025 - The final weekend

The between events rebuild is nearing completion.  One week from today it will, once again, be show time.  A small but dedicated crew has basically redesigned and rebuilt the main manipulator mechanism.  It works quite well.  Why, oh why, could they not have figured this out earlier??

This is something like version 5.0.  Here's 4.0.  Or 4.1, I forget.

It is obviously a smaller, neater mechanism, and is made of 1/8 inch aluminum instead of quarter.  This is quite helpful.  Last event we were within ounces of the 115 weight limit.

It seems as if the lessons of our first event have been learned.  Essentially they are that the real world is not a controlled environment.  The rebuilt robot reflect that.  It's easier to line things up.  It will let you know when it is following an autonomous path by vibrating the control unit.  It can grab game pieces pitched out by excited, fallible, teen aged humans with a 90% success rate.

Still a couple of days of tweaking and drive practice, but the end of the 2015 competition season is in sight.

Busy times after that too, more on this going forward.

As I suspected...........

Last week, "Monkey" my current Nemesis when doing grandchild watching duty had unexpectedly popped his shifty self into Cryonic Storage.  I wondered what he was up to.  Nothing good I figured....

I've been doing this sort of thing for many long years, and my instincts are usually spot on.  Here's what turned up at my most recent session.

Devolution from mammal to dinosaur.  This looks like trouble.

FIRST Robotics 2025 - Report Seven

And so we find ourselves between our two competitions.  For reasons unknown - although possibly just to torment the coaches - the kids always insist on going to the earliest possible event.  It does tend to make them work harder early on, but we are not a big enough team to always work the bugs out in just six weeks of work.

2022 - Well, a rebuild year, not much could be done

2023 - Very solid design that almost qualified us for Worlds.  If only we'd know a few things about limiting the current to motors so they don't turn into small, expensive space heaters.

2024 - Many design issues that we mostly fixed by our second event.  

And 2025 - a design that was so very ambitious and came oh so close to meeting its objectives.  In a game of inches, close don't count.  (By the way, none of the kids had every heard the adage about Horseshoes and Hand Grenades, but those are not part of their modern world).

So its another year of heavy duty prototyping and software wizardry.  Honestly, the core group of this team seems to enjoy this process and works right on through Spring Break.

One of the things being worked on is more accurate targeting.  The game involves placing sections of PVC pipe onto these weird purple things:

We have the ability to set the robot's cameras to look for certain combinations of shapes and colors, and to drive to them with precision.  So, why not just "target" upright purple pipes?  First effort: Promising!  Note the green targeting dot inside the red rectangle.

Second attempt: Concerning!

We've all seen that movie.....

Tree Shaped Tombstones - Dodge Wisconsin

 An impressive family monument in a small town that is not on any of my usual routes.  

Brief Life History of Hugh T

When Hugh T Roberts Jr was born on 13 June 1839, in Wales, United Kingdom, his father, Thomas Hugh Roberts, was 33 and his mother, Catherine Roberts, was 28. He married Margaret Jones on 11 August 1870, in Dodge, Wisconsin, United States. They were the parents of at least 7 sons and 7 daughters. He lived in Calamus, Dodge, Wisconsin, United States for about 30 years. He died on 5 January 1918, in Dodge, Wisconsin, United States, at the age of 78, and was buried in Bethel Cemetery, Dodge, Wisconsin, United States.

Here, and Here, and Here....Memories of Vindolanda

March.  It's always a month of transition for me.  The Robotics Campaign culminates in competitions and spins down to a lower RPM effort of outreach and recruiting.  The weather warms up, with the occasional slap across the face of brief cold snaps.  And on the warm days, when the sun shines bright and actually seems to be conveying a bit of both heat and light with them photons, I think of excavating in England.

Sometimes I just call up the Google Earth map of the area and use it to virtually "walk" up from the train station to my home away from home, the Bowes Hotel.  And then over hill and dale to mirror my daily walk to the site.  And as for Vindolanda proper, I look at the map in a fashion most reminiscent of what Jupiter, or more plausibly an eagle would see the site.  And I remember things. 

Below is the site from a better than Google Earth perspective.  Probably taken by "Steve the Drone".

 

Here's something from one of the early years.  2009 as I recall.  It's a simple wall stone that some bored soldier engraved with a, well in the UK we'd call it a Willy.  Found by a very nice, very proper woman who seems to turn this sort of artifact up regularly.  Cheers, Phallic Liz!

One year we had snow, or at least lots of mushy hail.  Just enough for my pal Pete to make some impromptu snow men.  Probably 2015.

My brother Fred came over a couple of times.  Here we are posing with our Dutch pal Pierre, on a wide main road of the fort we'd been uncovering.  Pierre later married a woman he met on site.

Probably 2014.  At least that's the date stamp on the photo.  Oddly I thought the origins of The Anaerobes band was earlier.  Pierre, by the way, actually plays guitar.

2022, the year I got to spend an entire month on site and was there when my Welch friend Dylan found a truly remarkable carved stone.  An insult for the ages with a graphic element for those who are visual learners!

Date uncertain, possibly 2013, The Year of Much Rain.  I'm wearing the yellow rain jacket I favored in earlier times and there is a stone aqueduct behind me.  I'm pondering something....

 

Just some random memories of green fields to keep me warm on a night when a late spring blizzard is coming through for a bit of mean spirited action.

Apologies if my arrows designating locations are a bit off.  The supervising archaeologists sight in everything with gps mapping systems.  I don't.

About 10 weeks to boots (Wellies of course) on the ground.

Robot Times, New and Old

Most years I post several days worth of stuff when the FIRST robotics team has their events.  This year, no.  I was an official at the event and actually spent very little time with the team.  It's all part of the succession plan, gotta let the new leadership have the fun and of course, the non fun!

Many gremlins were encountered.  Battle was joined.  We vanquished some of the grems and finished stronger than we started.   My view of things was mostly stuff like this:

A full weekend of pounding music, weird lighting, strobes, a bit of stress.  It's wicked hard on the central nervous system.  Took me 24 hours to recover.

I did venture out a few times.  After all, I do need to keep adding to my Mascot Photo collection.  Here I'm trying to mimic the bright staring eyes of the Husky.  I think I nailed it....

Aw heck, too good not to swap over as my profile picture for a while......