Ketchup, Mustard and their Little Pal RoboDog

I'm not an engineer, but its funny, there are some engineering concepts that translate to the real world.  Apply a lot of force to something and it moves.  Less force, maybe not.

Over the weekend we brought two robots to an off season competition.  One was "Mustard" the robot built by the high school team over a couple of months of  work.  Complex.  Had a rough outing at its first event but was heroic in the second tournament.  At its third event - the unofficial state tourney - it flagged a bit.  And it was mostly just sitting around since then.  A couple of the high school team members who had never driven it took a couple hours to see if they could learn it.

The other robot was Ketchup.  Built by middle schoolers over the course of 6 sessions.  Rugged, single minded, it was designed to do one thing.  Pick up those white pipes and drop them into the lowest tier of the scoring platform.  They worked hard on this project.

So....how did it turn out?

 Mustard, the high school robot struggled.  It was

designed to do one thing, score those pipes on the highest

scoring point.  Alas, just as one dog year equals seven

human years, so also with robots.  One month is about

seven human years, making Ketchup an old timer.

Old timers have aches and pains, things that go amiss

We had wiring issues deep inside the mechanisms, and

several matches the darn thing just sat there.  Worst

record of all robots there in the qualifying rounds.  True,

it got a bit happier towards the end.  Pit crew and the

new drivers learned a lot.  It got picked for an 

elimination round alliance based on how it ran its last few matches.

As for Ketchup, the middle school built machine...it was designed to do one thing and to do it very well.  Pick up those pipes and get them to the lowest scoring level reliably and fast.  10 per match please.  It's lining up for the shot in this picture, with its temporary number 9996.

And it did just that.  True, it only managed a bit more than 7 per match but to be fair it was called upon to play defense a few times or it would have come close.  The event kept detailed stats, and Ketchup finished ahead of several regular season robots in the won lost column (including its big brother Mustard) and number one in those L1 scores.  Design objectives achieved.

Ironically the two robot sibs were both on the same alliance in playoffs and did very well together.  They did not quite make it to the final round, but came close.

The matches will be available on Youtube in a few days.   I'll post some links then.  We may also put together a "Making of Ketchup" video down the road a bit.  In the meantime here's a bit of entertainment from the displays out in the lobby area.  Robot Dog.  Hank would go nuts seeing this...

Middle Schoolers and their Robot

It's been a hectic six weeks.  So, how much can a group of middle schoolers accomplish in that time?  Well, here's the numbers.  Once a week sessions, 11-4 on Tuesdays.  We usually had 6 to 9 students working, with two or three adult coaches and one or two invaluable high school team members.  In that time they went from nothing....to this:

Impressive.

They'll be taking it into competition on Saturday.  If interested, the live stream should be at:  https://www.youtube.com/@frcteam8744  

I've seen a lot in 27 years of working with kids and robots.  Wonderous things.  Alarming things.  But surprising things?  Not very often of late.  But this group, this robot....surprised me.  In a good way of course.

Robots goin' Places. Robots doin' Things. Summer 2025.

There's been....a lot going on.  The high school team has been doing outreach visits.  School Board, sponsors, that sort of thing.  These are fun for the kids.  Also, work for me.  But necessary.

At most of these events we are given a specific time slot.  But we always go way over.  It's because our audience always has lots and lots of questions.  Gather engineers around robots and its hard to pry them away.

One new wrinkle to this summer's visits is that we brought along both the high school robot and the one we have middle school kids building for an upcoming off season scrimmage.  Here's the two machines side by side.

The one on the left is "Mustard" our 2025 competition robot.  Its lil' pal is "Ketchup".  Ketchup is designed to pick up the game pieces - called Coral btw - off the floor and deposit them on the low shelf of the scoring structure.  Often.  I've told the tyke's drive team I'd like to see them do ten scores in a match.  Here's how it works.....

Of course you want those game pieces to be as far away from their point of origin, and therefore close to their destination.  So we had the next year 7th, 8th and 9th grade kids practice launching the Coral as far out onto the floor as possible.  Kids this age are good at scattering things around on the floor.

Lots of fun.  With more and better ahead.

Build and Rebuild. Robot Summer, 2025

The thing about school based teams is that you are always in rebuild mode.  Realistically kids are in high school for four years.  The things they need to learn to excel in say robotics, or for that matter football, etc, take years to learn.  Then they graduate.

Our FIRST robotics team has always had its foundations at the middle school level.  It evolved, or perhaps mutated, from a fun after school class where kids built small combat robots.  We've had some good years, some off years, but overall the trend line is heading up.  If we can keep the talent coming.

I have a higher than normal tolerance for middle schoolers.

This summer we are taking a batch of kids who have shown interest in robotics and are just having them build their own robot to compete in an off season event.  Obviously this is insane.  A crew of 20 with seven weeks to get it done was hard pressed last season.  Rookies who only get seven 5 hour sessions?  Aw heck, we'll get it done.

We are starting with an existing drive base.  Oh, the sides had to be replaced.  And while some of the wiring was "on board" already it all had to be checked and secured.

This frame dates back to "Howard", our successful 2023 machine.  It's pretty sturdy, also pretty heavy but since the design is fairly simple we should make weight.

The grabber device for picking up the PVC pipe game pieces.

Works pretty well.

We think we set a one day record for most parts made on our CNC.  Last year's Design Lead had a bunch of things he wanted to try on this design.  The newbies are not ready for full on design work, but learning how to secure metal for cutting, keep the cutting bits cooled, keep fingers away from spinny, sharp things.  It's all fundamental stuff.

As always, software waits for the machine to be operational.

The kids are doing well.  What we are really looking for is awareness of safety, the ability to tell the difference between shoddy and spiffy work, and of course being able to work well on a team.

So far, very good.  We'll see how things come together for that mid August mini-competition.

State Championship 2025

Compressing a 32 team robotics competition into one day is no small feat.  The organizers did an excellent job.  

Stepping into the event as it was powering up I immediately got the feel of robot season.  I guess it is not buried too deep in my awareness.

Team 5826 got off to a strong start, with our first match being a resounding victory.  We were, albeit briefly, ranked number one in the state.  Ah, but this was an elite level competition.  When your robot works perfectly you might win, depending on who you are paired against.  When your robot has glitches, you won't.  As the event wore on our robot started to show its age/complexity.

We did end up playing in the elimination rounds.  As alliance selection works in a serpentine fashion there is actually some mild benefit to being ranked below mid range.  We were picked by the number two seeded alliance.

But after a brief playoff run we were out.

Lots was learned.  Essentially we have gone from a fun but unserious program to one that has climbed about halfway to the top.  We can see the highest limit of what can be done....but the slope above us is steep.  

This was also a chance to say farewell to some really outstanding seniors.  The post Covid rebuild of team 5826 has brought us our greatest successes, and these kids deserve the credit.  Where we go from here; how the team gets "built" for the third time......?  Well, these questions can wait a week or so.  Its not just the robot that is tired.

Silly side note.  A pit area near us had a cute lil' robot dog.  I'm thinking Hank would have gone insane seeing this in person....

When Worlds Collide - The FIRST game for 2026.....

FIRST is known for "teasing" next year's game with early trailers.  They seldom give any real clues, just the name, the sponsors and some ambiguous images.  For 2026 it looks like the theme is archaeology!

Well, my mechanical engineering skills have fallen far behind the current technology, and my software skills have always been minimal.  But archaeology?  That I know!

Order and Chaos - Robotics 2025/26

Same room.  Sort of the same mission.  Two very different vibes.

Wednesday, 5pm.  End of season pizza with the robotics team.  A time to say good bye to our seniors.  I've known some of them since they were runty 6th graders.

Monday.  Morning and on into noon hour.  As part of our long range recruiting I gave a quick presentation on robotics to a bunch of tech ed classes.  And for good measure, set up the robot in the cafeteria.  It was not running, but could still hold its own lunch tray.

This was a quiet moment.  Then the bell rang announcing 6th grade lunch.  Egads......

Bedlam.  But I remind myself, some of those highly accomplished graduating seniors are kids I met when they were goofy 6th graders.  It's a lot of work to get from point A to point B.  

A bit of time off from robots now, but there is plenty coming up in the supposed "off season".

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.

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.....

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.

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.....

FIRST Robotics 2025 - Report Six. Or thereabouts

 A fair bit of work has gone on since we took the robot for a trial scrimmage a week ago.  Things continue to break and be fixed, with the trend going towards the latter.  This is a pretty complicated critter this time around.

In general, the mechanical side has proven very robust.  One major design decision early needed to be revisited.  We now acquire the game pieces by a roll in from the side system.  It works pretty well but is still rather janky lookin'.

The team member standing on the desk is just being prudent.  There have been a few interesting events, such as when the on board gyroscope failed.....

We have some swell looking bumpers this year.

The primary mission of the robot is acquiring those white plastic pipe sections and parking them on various levels of the "tree".  We are actually best at the highest branch.  This is also the most points.

At the start of each match there are these big green bouncy balls in the way.  They need to be removed, with some points gained by parking them in a slot.  At the practice event we did not see this attempted often.  Or done well.  Here's our method:

So....how's it gonna play out in Duluth later in the week?  If we don't break anything major, and if the various lighting and orientation markers are similar to what we practiced with, we should do OK.  Then we'll have a few weeks to tune up, fix up, or if necessary, tear up before we get to do it all over again.

WEEK ZERO

The robotics team has a big tournament coming up. In fact, two weeks from today it will be done.  This is in what is called Week One of the FIRST robotics competition season.  Five more weekends events follow.

If you have your robot working, or more commonly, mostly working, there are opportunities to run it in a pre-season event called a Week Zero.  The field is a bit more plywood than aluminum and polycarbonate, but close enough for a practice event.  

Last year we could not make it.  Our robot was falling apart.  The year before, ditto.  Over the roughly ten seasons of the team's existence we've only managed a Week Zero twice.  As it is an excellent way to see what  works and what does not, its pretty valuable and attending one was not just a goal this year but a Prime Directive.  So off we went.  

Some things worked, some needed work.

Here's the on the field drivers meeting at the start of the day.  40 teams signed up, but a few were kept away by a spate of nasty weather the night before.

And out onto the field.  We managed to "answer the bell" for the first match of the season for anyone!

We knew our software team had not yet had time to get most of the control systems tuned up, or in some cases operational at all.  On the other hand, our mechanical build seems rock solid.  If you are, in effect, a big clumsy oaf crashing into things it helps to be durable! 

Our system for intaking those sections of PVC pipes is particularly twitchy.  Unexpectedly, when teams "miss" - and often as not this was us - and they pile up in front of the station, it gets hard to acquire them.  A short lived and very unsuccessful kludge solution was tried.

A good trip, much was learned.  We have a lot of work to do in the next ten days but we know what it is.  As software did their secret rituals in another corner of the room the 5826 pit crew was able to briefly engage in their traditional idles moments Uno game.

FIRST Robotics 2025 - Report Five

Robot needs to be operational on some level for a pre-season scrimmage on Saturday.  As of Thursday last week we had the manipulator systems working pretty well.  Here's video proof, albeit with humans pushing the thing around.  We've seen the drive base be capable for a week or so already.

The two halves of the robot were being bolted together at the end of Saturday session.

So, its coming along.  There's a whole bunch of wiring to do over the next few days, and we really hope everything works together as well as it did separately.  With a bit of luck - and of course more hard work - we'll get to the point where at least the adult coaches don't have that much to do.  This is actually a hard skill to master, but some of us are practicing up....

FIRST Robotics 2025 - Report Four

Robot building seasons have ebbs and flows, tides and landscapes.  The middle weeks get hectic, so I'm out of my usual Friday reporting mode.

I've mentioned more than once that a quarter century of doing things like this has given me the ability to "see" roughly two weeks into the Robot Future.  Oh, you think this is a good thing?  Trust me, its a curse.

I spent most of last week looking at work in progress and work projected and thinking....well that won't work.  Mostly due to weight limits.  The robot can only weigh 115 pounds this year.  And as its various components were being worked on separately I got more and more antsy.  Yes, I encouraged them to weigh things every session, but they found that a bother. It would get in the way of adding more cool things, bolting them on, wiring them up, maybe adding just one more motor or gearbox.  Nobody likes to listen to elderly eccentrics.  But I told them it looked to me like about 106 pounds without all the wiring and more critically without a sizable - but non mission critical - subsystem.

Eventually they got tired of hearing me whine and put it on the scale.  Which read 106 pounds.

It's fine.  The main systems have proven to be more versatile than expected, rendering the auxiliary subsystem (and it would have been about another 20 pounds!) unnecessary.  We can now proceed with a simpler, more robust, "cleaner" design, which admittedly still needs quite a bit of tuning and tweaking.

Heading into that always crucial long Saturday session, here's what we had:

Main assembly, elevator and grabber.  It's mounted on a temporary base that approximates the right geometry.

And the actual drive base.  Nice omnidirectional drive modules and most of the electronics.  The latter appear to be floating in mid air, but that's because they are mounted on nice, clean polycarbonate plastic.  It will look scruffy and Mad Max soon enough.  Maybe I like this view so much because until the scruffification you can imagine the electronics just floating (weightlessly, boy I wish!) on thin air.

Bring it on, Saturday.....

Well that's pretty fun.  Very speedy and more importantly, easy to control.  The one remaining subsystem to Prove is the "elbow" on the main manipulator.  We had it running briefly until it drew too much current and fried a wire connector.  We are going to lighten it a bit and increase the gear reduction on the motor that drives it.

From the early part of the season there had been a plan to have a ground intake device.  Alas, finally putting the robot on the scale it became clear that the mechanism as designed would put us over weight.  But...could you make a really simple, really light, really dumb device that could do most of the job?  Let's find out.

And so it goes.  We don't have everything working, but a lot of it.  We expect to have it all working together in about a week.  Enough time, but none to spare.  We just have to avoid any cancellations due to weather.  Fingers crossed.

FIRST Robotics 2025 - Report Three

Time for another "day by day" report.  We continue to have members out for illness....

Monday

An odd day.  School was out for teacher's in-service but we could have practice afterwards.  Three of our really dedicated students took the opportunity to come in during the morning and help one of the tech ed teachers get up to speed with the cnc router the team purchased and donated to the school.  Best way to do that was to make more parts.

For the actual build session, things coming together nicely.

Lets zoom in for a detail.  It is the details in the end that actually count.

This is the mechanism for the "wrist" that positions the main manipulating gadget.  It already has the sensors built in, which will allow positioning to within less than a degree.  And the odd black rectangular bit is a belt tensioner.  We are trying to use timing belts instead of chain, both for weight conservation (we'll need to watch that) and reliability.

Tuesday

School and practice cancelled, as it was Ice Age level cold.

Wednesday

We usually don't meet this day of the week, but this year's team is not easily deterred.  A small crew, made smaller by the bothersome wave of illness going through the community, came in for an extra session.  Their goal was to get the elevator rigged and operational.  And they got it close, although there are some pesky friction points somewhere yet to be found.

Thursday

Starting to look like something.  We can power the elevator up and down, although there are a few hiccups to figure out.  The manipulator is big and scary.  It looks like it won't tolerate any nonsense from uncooperative game pieces.