Robot Christmas in July!

Robotics involves lots of supplies.  Electronics, motors, aluminum and plastic stock.  Lots of it we now have in stock, but there are always things that are needful.  Because shipping costs extra we try to merge shopping lists into larger deliveries.  And I have always considered the day that big boxes of coolness turn up on the porch to be "Robot Christmas".  I of course need to open a few....just to make sure everything has arrived in good shape.

Our latest undertaking is a new spin on Robot School, our farm club at the middle school level.  And with a new venture we of course need new toys.  Lots of new toys.  FIRST Tech Challenge robots are about 15% of the size of the high school program machines, but they have lots and lots of small fiddly parts.  We are talking about hundreds of items showing up in a half dozen boxes....

Some of this stash came from a recent workshop where students had put some of the parts together in a basic frame...

Merry Robot Christmas!  I thought it would be fun to stack the hoard up into something resembling a Christmas tree.

01000111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01000010 01101100 01100101 01110011 01110011 00100000 01110101 01110011 00101100 00100000 01100101 01110110 01100101 01110010 01111001 00100000 01101111 01101110 01100101 00100001

The above is conversion to binary code of Tiny Tim's "God Bless us, every one!"

FIRST Robotics - The 2026 Season in Review

Something cobbled together for the team's annual banquet.  Appropriately, for Team 5826, this was held on 5/8/26.  I missed it, being in flight for England where in any case it would have been 8/5/26 which would not have done at all.  8526 by the way is the number of a defunct team down in Texas that only managed one season of competition.

On to new challenges, and another major team rebuild.  You always have mixed feelings about graduating a batch of outstanding kids.  Darn they turned out well.  Darn we're gonna miss 'em.  And so the cycle repeats.

FIRST Robotics 2026 - Odds and Ends

We 3D print our own robot wheels.  They are made of some magic stuff called TPU.  Super grippy when you are running on carpet.  You do have to swap them out after a certain number of matches.  Used red one on the left, new black model on the right.

Our driver from a few years ago was a ferocious young lady who loved to play defense.  She sent a video message to the team for our pack up to State night.  Basically she said: "Stop being so wimpy on defense.  You have TPU wheels for a reason!!"

So at State our robot had a rather vigorous series of interactions with other robots and with solid objects.  The front bar (top one) took enough force that the 1/8 inch thick box tube deformed about 3/4 of an inch in its center.  Impressive, but it still did its job.  Below is an undamaged section of the same stuff sans powder coating.  Of course we carried a spare, but also straightened out this damaged part.  It has become a souvenir. 

Mascots of course.  State had more of them than the smaller district events.  

I suppose my new Facebook profile picture needs a little explaining.  The game pieces were these yellow balls.  They were produced by various suppliers, and in testing we found differences.  Weights were anywhere from 7 ounces to 8.5 or so, and they also differed a lot in "compliance", the degree to which they compress under pressure.  We labeled them for selective use when doing various shooter testing.

Being non compliant in various ways, and remarkably resistant to going squish under pressure, I of course had to mug with one of these.....

Bumper Foam Productions

Exactly what I do on the robotics team is a fair question, and one I suspect gets asked on occasion.  Sometimes it is just necessary to have an extra adult around to keep an eye on things.  I'm also mostly in charge of the Farm System, as I have a level of comfort with the middle school world view that is either remarkable or worrisome.  Or both.  Other than that, and some janitorial duties, I guess I'm the Department of Odd Ideas.

Here's one.

I found out that a team that had been around for ten years was giving out tiaras to mark the occasion.  Not just for themselves, they were handing out tiaras to other teams in their tenth season.  Like us.  So, anticipating this I had the kids make a Congrats on Ten Years trophy to give in return.  The usual parameters, made of scrap parts from last years robot and mounted on a bit of bumper.  Complete with fabric of course.

Well, problem is...they forgot our tiaras.  

This was of course corrected when we were both at State.  I think they brought us some extra good ones.  So, who wore it best? (By the way, from my long expertise at test taking I can assure you that None of the Above is a valid answer...).

Yes, I am showing mostly the adult coaches hamming it up here.  Some students have the proper sense of fun.  Others tend to take themselves a bit too seriously.  As most of us did back in high school.

Big thanks to Team Ferradermis for the creative gesture.  One of several nice things about the new format this year is that we now compete "in state" and get to know our fellow Cheesehead teams much better.  

Oh, about the title of the post today.

At our last event we were tasked with putting together a "highlights" video on short notice.  It turned out well, thanks to our video editor, a conscripted camera person and the help of various other folks.  On completion I asked if the people who had worked on it wanted to be crediting by name.  They said, nah. So a silly production company name was used instead.

Well at the state event the highlights video was done by a different crew, so we got to do a sort of Promotional Video.  Something to show potential sponsors and so forth.  In typical Bumper Foam Productions fashion it was filmed within a wrench throw of our pit (no actual wrenches thrown) and edited into nice form in 90 minutes.  It's very satisfying to hand off a USB drive and say, "Here, five hours ahead of deadline and we made everyone look good".  At least that's how I see it...

And of course......

FIRST Robotics 2026 - The Road Home from State

I'll have more on this down the road a bit.  It takes a while after a watershed sort of event to get perspective.  Did we Win it All and qualify for Worlds?  No, not even close.  But that's OK.

It was in some ways a surreal experience.  We drove down to the venue (outside of Milwaukee) running ahead of a storm front.  A few hours after we drove through some places along the way they were hit hard by tornadoes.  At the event proper all meaningful night before practice and field calibration was cancelled as we huddled in interior hallways while sirens blared.  I blame our friends from the next door town.  Their team name is STORM, which is some sort of acronym.  Their event give away buttons....

Our team of course has had experience with nasty weather curtailing practice time.  It bit us hard at our Lacrosse event, so we were well prepped and did not suffer too much from this latest schedule glitch.  I am however convinced that at some point someone on our team inadvertently offended an Old Gypsy Woman who put a curse on us.  I must relate a few stories along these lines one day...

We played well early.  Our design was simple and rugged.  This is good, we had no serious mechanical issues.  But there were a dozen or robots with seriously better designs, and as the event went on we encountered them with predictable results.

Still, we were an attractive second pick robot, and went into the playoff rounds feeling strong.  First match was against the alliance that eventually did Win it All.  Yikes, they deserve the trip to Houston.  Had we snuck in we'd have been even more outclassed there....

But what is class?  This is an outstanding group of students.  The core of the team are kids we've seen grow up and thrive over the last four to five years.  We'll miss these soon to graduate stars.  They are a big part of our success.  There's some new kids coming up as well.  Another tip of the cap to the students who, once again, were tasked with a complex video project on a tight time line and with insufficient instructions from the event organizers.  It is very satisfying to be able to hold up the USB drive and say: "Here ya go.  3:18 duration, done five hours ahead of deadline".  I'll get it posted here in the days ahead.

And we won the Quality Award.  Basically this is for the team that builds the most robust machine in the competitive field.  I think we mostly got it for the impressive THE MEG bar that anchored the front of our design.  It took some mighty hits as our driver gained confidence.  And throughout the entire event, heck the entire season, we never lost an intake component.

There are some good stories there, stories for another day...

On the way home we stopped for food.  The team wanted McDonalds.  We'd been to a Chick fil A a couple nights before.  Great food, but their Play Land had a sign saying you had to be under a certain height to Play.  McDonalds has a more lenient policy.

FIRST ROBOTICS 2026 - State Tournament

So the robotics team qualified to go to the State Tournament.  The top teams there - I think its 8 - get to go to Worlds at Houston.

It's been a good season.  Since we moved up to being a "two event team" in 2023 we've usually had one good event and one not so good one.  This season, despite some really weird luck with things like weather, we did well at both our events.  Placed 6th at one, 9th at the other.  

In a year where we were starting a major rebuild this is quite good.  Software in particular over performed.  And for once the kids started with a realistic design and just forged ahead building it and gradually optimizing it.  

How this will translate to the next level of competition is unclear.  We will be facing the top teams from all four of the qualifying District events.  I'd say at least ten of them have decidedly "better" robots.  But its more complicated than that.  

Matches are played between "alliances" of three robots on each side.  Sometimes there are a couple of major scoring robots....and a third member of the alliance that shuttles game pieces, plays a bit of defense, etc.  That third robot can be the difference when the Big Boys go head to head.

Well, that's the theory anyway.  

The robot has looked good in its final tune ups.  We discovered for instance that one of our four drive wheels was basically not working for part of the last event.  Now fixed.

If nothing else we'll go, have a good time.  Play Well With Others.

Details when available.

Mascots and Me

Because of course there were mascots at the recent robotics tournament.  And I show no signs of growing up...

Robotics Again

Off we went to an early April robotics tournament.  It was a nice short drive down to Lacrosse.  Heading south actually, so what's the odds weather would bite us this time?  Pretty good as it happens.

One of those late season storms that barges through and makes a mess happened to arrive at just the wrong time.  As school was cancelled - I'm sure an upcoming four day weekend had nothing to do with this - students were not allowed to travel.  Even though by the early afternoon departure time conditions were just fine.  Bureaucracy at its finest.

So our team had to get up darned early the next day and show up for the event with no practice time, no time to tune up the robot or really to do much else.  And it showed.

Well, sometimes you just get snake bit.  In one match BOTH of our alliance partners tipped over, leaving us in an unenviable 1 v 3 match.  Another time a robot crashed into the protective panel hard enough to knock our control laptop clear off the ledge and disconnect us.  Flukes.  At one point we were down to number 30 out of 34.

But we came back.  Eventually we clawed our way back to 9th place and were in the late event playoff rounds.  Sometimes called Elimination rounds.  And we were.

Oh well.  We did well enough to qualify for the upcoming State Tournament.  We won a Gracious Professionalism Award for an unprecedented third year in a row.  And late in the event we were tapped to put together an event highlights video.  

We ended up having to compress about 8 hours of work into half that time, with the main video editor student yawning and shaking his head.  Hey, he had been up since 4am to get there (see above).

The video turned out well, and a pretty good time was generally had by all.

Keeping an Eye on the Robots

I've been going through the world of FIRST robotics trying out every job.  Judge, Field Reset, Referee, at the lower levels I've done a bit of MC work.  At this event I'm a Robot Inspector.  You have to ensure that the teams comply with all sorts of rules.  I try to be supportive, yet steely eyed...

Mostly fun, I've not had to admonish anyone to any degree.  But after hours of digging around inside robots....

Not sure how my team will do.  There was an unfortunate storm system that came through and closed school for the day.  As a result the team was not allowed to travel even though by noon it was quite decent outside.  This puts us at a competitive disadvantage.   No practice rounds for us on Thursday night, no field calibration either.  We'll see how things go.....

FIRST Robotics 2026 - The Meg 2.0. And interviews with people and inanimate objects....

Our robot, The Meg, got a lot of things right.  That's why we started our recent event running off a 9-0 streak.  But after that it got a little tougher.  So we had some things to fix...but not - as in years recent - a full rebuild on our plate.

Let's start with a new "nameplate".  It is also our main crash bar for front impacts.  It is now both stronger and scarier looking.

Various other tweaks all happened in rapid order.  The goal is to even out power draws. In our last event there were "brown outs" that in particular impacted vision targeting.  

Fun video from our last tournament.  A mix of Meet the Robots and Asking Odd Questions:

In keeping with the short deadlines, fast turn around of FIRST we are heading to another tournament later this week.  Much more on this in a few days.

Oh, I can't resist.  Here's a quick peek at the upgrades, which include teaching the robot to actively resist being budged by defending robots - or interfering humans - once the targeting cameras have the launcher spun up and ready to go....

FIRST Robotics 2026 - Tournament Number One

Off with the team to Appleton Wisconsin for a long, tiring weekend.  It's a three hour drive. 

A successful outing that proved the merit of our design and construction, and showed off what a group of talented kids can accomplish with hard work.  We astonishingly started by winning our first nine matches.  This has never happened before, and statistically may never happen again.

By the end a bit of wear and tear was showing, so our time in the double elimination final rounds was short, but for a first event it was excellent.  We have a limited amount of time to repair, recharge and in selected cases upgrade.  We are off again in about ten days.  

As usual, some oddity photos.  I'll try to add a link to our matches when it becomes available.

This event was in a big high school gym.  It's actually nicer than some of the arena type venues we've been in.  Maybe you can feel a bit of residual energy from generations of kids excited about things going on in front of them.

Our driver actually seems a bit pleased with the damage our robot's name plate took in an intense match.  

There are as always little event freebies.  In keeping with our school mascot we had these little plastic cardinals.  Somebody arranged them in this pattern.  Various stories were concocted about what was going on here.  Some were a bit dark, court martials and such.  I suggested the vibe was "Teach us oh Eldest and Wisest".  But maybe I was projecting.

Not as many mascots as in earlier days.  Those suits are hot and awkward, so when you do see them it is towards the end of the event.  I of course had to ham it up with a couple of birds.  It's me doing my best bird imitation.  It's not very convincing.

More to come.  

Link to video of our matches  https://www.thebluealliance.com/team/5826/2026

 

Robotics 2026 - Off we go!

A final afternoon of tune up, tweaking and then packing the trailer.  It's great to be packing in shirt sleeve weather!

Not like last year.....

This was a silly photo I took prior to our departure to a tournament at about the same time in 2025.  And boy, howdy, that shovel was a handy thing to have around.

But this time, while the drive will be longer the weather looks great.

I'll be banking some extra sleep hours.

Team is competing in the Appleton District event.  If interested you can follow the results and  watch our matches at: 

https://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2026wiapp

We'll see how it goes......

Robotics Update - Competition Ahead!

Robot is coming along.  I've had a busy stretch lately and so have not been on hand as often as usual.  It's an odd ten days when you've been a hockey grandpa, a pallbearer and a robotics judge... I should have another update later in the week, and a tournament report before too long, but for now you'll have to be content with the robot's name:

This is a bit of homage to a former team member.  It's also the title of a really bad Shark Movie.  But Megan, the person, is actually more formidable than any shark!

I've been working with the new video crew.  Time to break in some 9th graders.  Here in order are:

The robot at STEM night, amusing some campfire girls:

And a shop tour of the 5826 build space:

And finally, robot meets robot dog.  With a supporting actor role for Hank, my loveable if dimwitted side kick.

Robot dogs meeting real dogs seems to be a common Youtube thing, but comparing the relative skill level of the two in retrieving yellow balls....guess we have that all to ourselves!

Robot Update

Lots going on.  Apologies for tardy robot updates.  I'm actually going to "kick the can down the road" a bit more with regards to what my team has been up to.  And show some things from my recent volunteer gig at the Duluth tournament(s).

I had actually volunteered as a Judge at the Lake Superior event.  Judging is great, you get to interact with amazing young people.  It is the sort of experience that just makes you optimistic about the future, and I do recommend it.  Now that stuff is all done under privacy rules and such, so there's not much I can show you.  But once the active phase of that is done you can wander about a bit.  Judges have blue shirts and badges that let you go anywhere, so I enjoyed being up close to the matches.  It's the second best seat in the house.

I also had a chance to renew old acquaintances.  With other robot people.  And in this case with a mascot.  I have my picture taken with the Husky every year.  This year for some reason we mugged for the camera with mock snarls

Shortly after that my day got even more interesting.  At Duluth there are two tournaments going on simultaneously.  Just a big curtain separating the two playing fields in what is under usual circumstances a giant hockey venue.  The event on the other side is called Northern Lights.  And they asked if anyone was available to help with field reset.

I've done field reset in prior years, it is a lot of fun.  You have specific tasks to accomplish.  You work in small teams, and after a bit develop smooth work patterns.  And, you get the absolute BEST seat in the house.  For me this was a big plus, as our team is competing in just under two weeks.  Until you see the game actually played it is very difficult to make predictions on strategy, what autonomous programs are worth having, what's gonna break, that sort of thing.  So I said, sure, why not and switched out the blue judge shirt for a standard Volunteer one.

The picture above shows the playing field at the end of a match.  Those yellow balls have been launched all over the place.  Most stay in the field.  And they all need to be lined up neatly for the next match.  Most of the herding is done with big rakes.  See the guy at top of frame.

From a certain perspective that sea of yellow is a bit disturbing....  It looks like a mass grave of Minions!

I guess this makes me the Grim Reaper of Minions.  Not a entry I thought I'd be adding to my resume.

FIRST Robotics 2026 - Putting it all Together

It's very helpful to bring your robot to a Pre-Season scrimmage.  This is a first chance to run on an actual field similar to competition, and with other robots.  And its a chance to renew old acquaintances, check out other designs, etc.   So well worth the trip and the day of work shop time it costs.....if you can get your act together in time.

Here's our robot on the scrimmage field....

And here's some of what it took to get there....

At the event we were trying out several new members for drive team.  The level of experience ranged from "a little bit" to none.  There were some occasions when they zigged instead of zagged, and once when the robot controller did not work....because they had not hit the Power On button!  But when you run something like 12 trial matches you have time to identify and stomp on all manner of bugs.  Loose wires, a burnt out motor, forgetting to set the robot's computer orientation system to FIELD.  By the end things were running well, at least as the basic "scoop things up, line things up, launch things up" protocols.

There remain quite a few small to medium sized tasks.  Adding a climber being the most obvious.  But with the basic build complete we'll probably stop making Weekly Progress videos and perhaps turn to special features.

Solid work.  Solid bunch of students.

FIRST Robotics 2026 - Week 5 Report

With the primary build nearly complete it has gone well.  Eerily well.  Perhaps I should not be surprised, as the core of the team are all in their fourth or fifth season and are a very smart bunch. We are not repeating past "learning experiences".  Some of the newbies are also showing considerable promise.  Anyway, here's the robot one week before we take it to a pre season scrimmage:

FIRST robotics Old Hands will notice that it does not have full bumpers.  Just a temporary front bumper needed for intake.  And here's the critter in action.......

That's actually quite good when you realize that it takes five mechanisms to get the ball from the floor to an airborne status.  I was expected a bottleneck somewhere.  Oh, and although we want it to be in good shape for this Saturday's scrimmage we actually have almost a month before it's real Show Time.  Should be time to get software fully to work and to add a secondary system - a climber that will lift the robot up off the floor.  We have four weeks and about ten pounds of available weight allowance to do this.

Impressive work by the team.

FIRST Robotics 2026- Week Four Report

Visible Progress during a FIRST robotics build season is not linear.  Sometimes you have students working very hard over keyboards and complex wiring.  It does not photograph well.  Then, you power up the robot and magic happens.  I call the first full function successful test the "Von Frankenstein Moment" for obvious reasons.

We were really close at the end of our long Saturday session.  But the robot just decided to be stubborn.  Better now than later.  But still, a steady week's work with no major setbacks.  (fingers crossed there).  There should be more to show in a day or two.

In the meantime....

We have a swell new "pit cart".  It is designed to hold everything we could potentially use for robot repairs.  Ideally nothing much more than the official Pit Crew card deck in the top drawer.  But if necessary there will be all manner of tools, spare parts, etc.

You actually have to take a lot of things to a robotics tournament.  We'll have one side of the cart with a white board for cartoons and messages.  Maybe the required fire extinguisher can be mounted on one side.  A fun little side project made entirely from scratch.  Some of the lumber we got for free.

We have the "hopper" attached.  The red tool box (the pit cart was designed to carry these) is where the launcher will be.  The polycarbonate hopper extends out over the intake system.  We were hoping to be able to carry 40 of these little "lemons".  Looks like we might hit 50!

Lots more coming soon.  In addition to the new pit cart we have a new robot transport cart.  It's off being powder coated.  Now, when I saw this thing I told the students that it was about the size of the car I was driving back in college.  So where are we going to park all this?  That is actually the question I spent six hours working on.

There's a back closet in the tech ed area.  It is full of stuff that has been jammed in there for a very, very long time.  Pet projects of teachers long retired.  Ham radio stuff.  CO2 powered cars.  Elaborate wind up airplanes and model rockets.  Boomerangs.  As our high school team works out of the middle school shop area I can but marvel at the prospect of 6th through 8th graders being allowed any access to boomerangs.   Also, text books.  

These are old.  That's not per se bad, some of them that deal with manual milling and machining of wood and metal are first rate.  But in the 21st century students are mostly not working from these archaic things called "books".  Most of the copyright dates are from the 1990's.  But a few went further back.  How far back?

Oh my.   And yes that is the date of this edition.  The first edition was listed as 1938.

For reference I was born one year earlier.

And there were other things to be found.  A whole batch of heavy, high quality mirrors.  Maybe for astronomy?  Dozens of cool wooden model kits where you can peg together little round balls and make models of atoms.  I had found mousetraps on the floor and assumed there had been an attempt to trap critters.  then I found a big box labeled "Mousetrap cars".  All this stuff is of debatable use.  The various car, rocket and airplane stuff has been reorganized and put on shelves appropriate for the priority.  The textbooks and such have been piled up for the tech ed teachers to rule on.  Of course any they deem still useful will be put back on the shelves.

There were other things in there too.  Robotics team stuff had also been haphazardly jammed in various places.  This makes it difficult to find, which is a problem independent of the "parking space" issue of the carts.  Sometimes you find mysteries.  I'll conclude with this item.  Let your imagination run wild....

FIRST Robotics 2026 - Week Three Report

We are about half way through Build Season.  I think, and hope, we are half way done with the robot.  It's hard to tell.  Various components are being built in different parts of the shop.  Will they all play nicely together?

Pictures forthcoming.  Personally I've been doing things on the periphery.  I shot some video when the usual camera persons were not available.  It was of very mixed quality.  I wonder if my geriatric eyesight in the tiny little preview screen had anything to do with it.  Oh, and I helped kids with bumpers.  Bumper construction is the most tedious of tasks.  I had hoped to escape it this year.  But no.  I guess its penance for my grievous misdeeds involving Robots Past....

Here's the robot at end of Saturday session.  It drives, picks up the game pieces, moves them on the conveyor belt.  This set of bumpers is made of old scrap.  Sufficient for testing and each crew of new bumper craftsmen must make the same mistakes.  In recognition of the Hardship Assignment all students working on bumpers get a special ice cream ration.

We are already at the stage where multiple working groups are competing for access to the robot.  It takes a bit of stage managing to get tasks prioritized.

Here's the CAD drawing of what the robot will look like with the extendable hopper, indexer and shooter added on.

And a couple of short video clips showing respectively, the intake/conveyor system working....

And....what the shooter can do.  Note...this was with the cameras and software recognizing the target distance and height, and automatically spinning up to the correct rpms for this location!

FIRST Robotics 2026 - Week Two Report

Bit of an odd week.  The last half of it had bitterly cold temps.  The sort of numbers that don't really matter if you quote them in F or C.  There was also - good timing - mid winter break, and some kids off doing college tours/Science Olympiad, etc.  But still, progress marches on.  (Yikes, makes me think of March, when our competitions start!!)

Lots of clever new mechanisms being prototyped, with a few approaching final production versions.  This is version 2.0 of the ball launcher, with an adjustable hood to change angle of launch.

This shows the Version 1.0 of the ball intake, and some crude duct tape experiments with the conveyor that will bring balls back to the launcher.

And, we have the robot's frame cut and ready for motors and mechanisms.

Here's the Week Two progress video.   

Video production has stepped up this season.  We are doing two a week now.  Here's a short, fun one where the "Hub", that's the field element you shoot the yellow balls into, is pulled out and assembled.  And then, well, suffice to say there is an option for a "Human Player" to launch a few from the sidelines....

And so it goes.  Decent progress but a few key systems need to get past the cardboard and duct tape stage of prototyping.  The nasty weather has slowed down parts delivery a bit....

FIRST Robotics 2026 - Week One Report

Pictures and video from our first week of build season:

Old robots being taken apart.  We need those parts, and new builders learn.  If you see how something comes apart you should understand how it went together.

An early build season task is always making accurate field elements.  We once torpedoed our entire season when a game piece delivery component was made with a ramp that was about 15 degrees from the spec.  Never again.

I never know how to illustrate what software does.  It's basically magic.  We thought this was going to be a weak spot on the team this year, but through a combination of alumni helping teach, a couple of smart 8th graders getting the call up to the Big Leagues, and another student with multiple talents helping out....looks promising.

OK, but where's Robot doing Robot things?

Intake prototype.  It has to be able to "touch it own it" for lots of game pieces.  We hope to have a capacity of 40.

And, once you have them, we need to be able to shoot them accurately on target.  Lots of 'em.  Fast.   In this one we got 8 balls airborne in 3 seconds.  Early "reliability" tests were hitting about 80% on target.  Not bad.

You may notice that we have adults holding this prototype down for testing.  It's not secured down, and it has a couple of flywheels that have a lot of stored energy.  There's a time to be a little extra cautious, and the end of a long Saturday session is one of them.

Of course consistency will be important, and it would be best to be launching them in pairs.  So a feed system is our biggest remaining challenge.   

Oh, and about flywheels.  We just happened to have a couple on hand.  They came off the fall Robot School machine which was designed and built with the sneaking suspicion that this would be a year to launch things.