FIRST Robotics 2020 - Report 4.1

I started the week with a vague sense of....foreboding?....anticipation?  More or less the feeling that we would "make or break" the season with our progress or non progress in late January.   So a little different format for a Friday morning....progress in a crucial week.

Monday

The most interesting thing about the day was how busy things seemed.  There were a lot of people on hand.  Seven coaches.  Three alumni - who mostly drop in to visit but occasionally offer the team advice.  And of our roster of 21 students we had 20 on hand.  This is pretty amazing.  Essentially the entire team shows up to do three hours of extra work directly after a full school day.  And do so three school nights a week plus a long session on Saturday.  Time for a team photo.

A good looking and hard working crew.

Tuesday

We have a "beta version" of our robot coming together.  It is the drive base, super structure, climber and most of the intake and conveyor mechanisms.  That last one is still in development.  Impressive, no?

Ah but it is too heavy.  So we have to make the final version out of thiner metal and find ways to lighten up everything.  More Swiss Cheesing ahead.  Perhaps the robot name will be some variation on "Swiss Cheezit".  None of the kids read my posts so far as I know, so I'll toss the name question out for discussion in a week or so and see what they come up with.

Tuesday was one of those frustrating days when not enough happened.  Unexpected parts were required.  Decision making was slow and distracted.  It is the first time we have ever had software so far out ahead of the build team, and they can only do so much with the current drive base.  They need something with a ball shooter on it.  Well, this is rather a pattern.  After a fun and productive day comes the let down day.  We regroup and come back to work another day.

Thursday

I notice the small things.  The team has changed.  This year, next to the safety glasses, there is this pack of pony tail holders.

There is perfection in small things.  Here's a sensor bracket.  Designed by one of our new recruits.  Yes, it is a small part, but the sensor unit clicks in perfectly.  Just needs a drop of glue.

Quite a bit of progress tonight.  Here's the robot with frame and drive systems done.  At least in prototype form.  In the foreground....The Enemy.  Otherwise known as the scale.  Reducing down to weight will be a most excellent engineering challenge.

There was not quite enough time to transfer the electronics and power up.  That should happen Saturday.  Along with many, many other things.  Here's the robot waiting for the next session, parked next to the software development frame.  Transferring the smart parts over should happen soon.

Oh, we have to ditch ten pounds, work the bugs out of the ball transfer system, redo the entire frame in lighter gauge steel, learn to drive it and a few other little details.  But at the end of the day four of the students hopped on the robot and propelled themselves around the room as if it were a giant armor plated skateboard.  A good  test of frame strength, and one it passed.  Kids having fun.

 

Heinrich Hertz and the tragedy of German Science

I learned things in my electronics class.  Not always things in the curriculum...because I kept wandering down interesting side paths.  For instance, we studied alternating current wave forms.  Ooh, compelling stuff.  Nah, only useful stuff.  But the unit of frequency for wave forms is hertz.  As in kilohertz, megahertz, etc.  I got to wondering who this was named after....and a remarkable but sad story emerged.  In a sense it is a condensed version of the larger somber tale of how German science and industry was bent to evil purposes in the first half of the 20th century.....

Meet Heinrich Rudolph Hertz.  A brilliant polymath he was accomplished not only in physics and engineering but learned Arabic and Sanskrit.  Although he had the previous theoretical work of Maxwell to build on he was the first scientist to prove the wave nature of electrical and magnetic fields.  Having basically just proven the principles on which radio, AC current and most modern electronics function he was asked what practical use he saw in this.  His answer?

"Nothing, I guess."

Heinrich Hertz died in 1894 at the young age of 34.  Cause of death was a disease I learned as "Wegner's Granulomatosis".  In recent years it has been renamed, as it turns out that Herr Docktor Wegener did some dodgy medical experiments involving concentration camp inmates.

Meet Gustav Ludwig Hertz, nephew of Heinrich.

Also a very bright fellow, he was one half of the team that presented the Franck-Hertz experiments to the scientific community in April of 1914.  These studied the electrical properties of gases in a vacuum and demonstrated the quantum nature of atoms. 

Oh, and about 1914 and gases....

Hertz served in the German army during WW I, in a special unit commanded by Fritz Haber that for the first time developed and deployed poison gas in warfare.  Pioneer Regiment 35/36 had no fewer than four future Nobel Prize winners in its ranks.  Franck and Hertz won the Physics prize in 1925.  Otto Hahn discovered nuclear fission and won the 1944 Nobel for chemistry despite carrying on his research in Berlin!  (To be fair it was only announced post war).  Fritz Haber topped them all.  He won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1918.....at a time when the acrid stench of poison gas still lingered in the depths of shattered battlefields.

An interesting reflection on a different mind set.  Haber won his prize for discovering a way that atmospheric nitrogen could be "fixed" and utilized in chemical reactions.  It allowed the mass manufacture of high explosives that tore apart millions of soldiers.  Also the commercial production of fertilizers that fed billions of civilians.  How different from our "woke" modern attitude that requires past figures be subjected to modern judgments, their statues removed, their presence in texts erased or marked with asterisks!

It has become fashionable to condemn any questioning of science as an "attack" and those who do so as "deniers".  But let's be fair, brilliant men are far from omniscient. H. Hertz discounting electromagnetic waves as a clever parlor trick.  Haber, Hahn and G. Hertz not seeing past their equations to gasping and incinerated bodies.  But in the epilogue to this tale there are rays both of dark and light.

James Franck and Gustav Hertz arranged to defect to the Russians at the end of World War II.  They worked on the Soviet nuclear program which thankfully to date has never been used in war.

Gustav's Hertz's defection meant that his son, Carl, also a physicist would not be allowed to work in the US.  A POW captured in North Africa he went post war to Sweden where he pioneered inkjet technology and performed the first cardiac ultrasound.  

Otto Hahn was also captured by the Western Allies.  When given the news of Hiroshima and Nagasaki he was appalled at the direction his work had taken.  His immediate response was to get very drunk.  In the longer term he became a prominent advocate for the abolition of nuclear weapons entirely.

Ah, but Fritz Haber had the strangest journey.  He continued work in secret on poison gas in the post WW I era.  But being of Jewish ancestry he fell into disfavor with the rise of the Nazi regime.  Remarkably he was invited to emigrate to England, where he worked for a few years. 

Fritz Haber

Finally Chaim Weizmann reached out to Haber, inviting him to come to Jerusalem and head up the Sieff Research Institute.  In failing health, Haber died en route.

The Sieff was later renamed the Weizmann Institute, premier academic organization of the post WWII state of Israel.  It was of course named for Chaim Weizmann, first President of Israel and a man who attained his early scientific fame by devising a method of making high explosive cordite by fermenting starch, thereby making his own contribution to the ability to destroy human life on a grand and grotesque scale.

FIRST Robotics 2020 - Report 4.0

Weather cooperated so we got our full week of work in on the robot.  In the traditional six week build season this is where we would look around and ask ourselves....is this half way done?  Even with two weeks "extra" it is a very fair question.  After all, you need a little time to learn how to drive the robot.

CAD design.  More features being added all the time.  More than 50% complete?  Oh yes.

The annual weight control tally board.  There's a lot that is not on here yet.  More than 50% to goal.  Oh no.

Ball transfer unit.  It turns out that it is harder to convey multiple balls versus one, and the new design has a weird bend in it to get more capacity in less space.  We are being vexed by feeding issues.  More than 50%?  Yes, but a ways to go.  Switching back to surgical tubing and perhaps making custom rollers.

I can't say much about software.  It seems they are getting things done. They have adopted the open office-standing work station policies of one of our sponsors.  Some team members do better standing on a cinder block!

One of the pulleys that will let our robot go sideways on a suspended bar.  It has been "Swiss Cheesed" for weight reduction.  Also it makes it look really cool.

Custom frame this year, laser cut from sheet metal.  This will probably not be the final version...we need to see how this all comes together, but time to burn a 1.0 version.

Robot frame coming to life in the harsh, stark lighting of the welding shop.  

And so it goes.  We have one eye on the calendar, one on the weight tally board.  Most subsystems sorta work and software has been doing assorted arcane things.  Stay tuned....the pace picks up shortly.

Going now to sacrifice a chicken to the weather gods....

Schedule of upcoming Speaking Events

Now there's a post title I never thought I would use.   For those who know me only in the virtual sphere I should explain that I am by default something of an introvert, and the notion of standing up in front of sizable groups of people and informing/entertaining them would not have occurred to me until rather late in life.

But my odd little hobbies have taken on their own life, and people seem interested in hearing about them.  So here's what I'm up to in March and April.

March 2nd, 1pm.  Digging Hill 80, Archaeology of a World War One Battlefield  This is one of three programs I'm doing in an "archaeology series" for Chippewa Falls Community Education.  Like the others it is an updated version of something I did for the Chippewa Valley Learning in Retirement program.  I now have the benefit of better photos of the conserved artifacts, and of course the somber reburial of the dead, at least one of whom was identified by our efforts.  

March 24th, 1pm.  Robotics in Education I'm doing this one for the Learning in Retirement program.  It's part of our efforts to help the Pablo Center for the Arts get a team going for next year's campaign.  I'm hoping we have enough of our robotics team around on spring break week that I can just be a sort of "ringmaster" while robots and students amaze retirees.  I did something along these lines three years ago and it worked out  pretty well, but that one was done in Chippewa Falls.  This will be at the Pablo Center proper, a rather impressive space. 

March 31st, time TBD.  Brewery History of Western Wisconsin  This one is at the Chippewa Valley Museum and is part of a series they are doing on the German heritage of our area.  Some Learning in Retirement members suggested I just redo the Forgotten Brewery Caves  talk that went well last fall, but I'll try to be a bit more wide ranging. Not that a few cave photos won't turn up also.

April 6th, 1pm.  Visiting Rome.  Skip the Colliseum. Another reworking of a prior program for the Chippewa Falls Community Ed folks.  This one might actually be the most difficult one to pull together, it reprises one from years back and neither my photographic skills nor my Powerpoint mojo have held up well.  Lots of work on this one.

April 20th, 1pm. Vindolanda, Archaeology of Hadrian's Wall.  Also for Chippewa Community Ed.  This should be an easy one....I'll be in the final packing up stage for the 2020 digging trip to Vindolanda and should be "in the zone" for this.  Also I've availed myself of some images of recent finds that are spectacular.

If anyone is interested in attending these, here's the particulars:

For the Chippewa Falls community ed programs, info at:  Cardinal Learning

Here's the Chippewa Valley Museum calendar.  It has not been updated yet.

The Learning in Retirement Program wants you to be a member and sign up in advance HERE.  But if you turned up and said you were a friend of the robotics team I think you'd be fine.  

FIRST Robotics 2020 - Report 3.0

Those familiar with FIRST robotics probably know about "Bag and Tag" day.  This was, prior to the current campaign, the Tuesday evening six weeks and two days after kick off when all teams had to put their robot into a sealed storage bag until competition.  There were various ways to game the system, mostly by building multiple clone robots and only bagging the "comp" machine while you practiced and did software development with the beta versions. This was felt to favor the high resource teams.  So this year...build until you compete.  This means that we have eight weeks instead of six.  But in a practical sense you should still get things done in six....so someone can actually learn how to drive the critter.

Maybe this means teams will get a bit lazy in the early weeks.  Or will they simply do the same amount of work on a more forgiving timetable?  Let's have a look at what things look like in the middle of week three.

I should mention we lost our long Saturday session to blizzard conditions.  Yuck.  Southern California teams are laughing at us.

The CAD team has been busy.  Here's a 3D model of the robot they are expecting to build.  From this design it is pretty easy to laser cut all the parts.  Welding them together is a bit more of a task.  Keeping the entire beast under 125 pounds probably will be a challenge.  Expect the final version to have lots of "Swiss Cheese".

The above design does not have the ball pickup and transfer units on board yet.  We are still testing the prototypes.  Here's ball transfer unit version 2.0.  The bright orange bungee cord seems to work well.

I don't have a picture to show it but software has made a sensor that detects the ball when it enters the transfer device and signals the motors to run until the ball is no longer breaking the beam. Sort of like your garage door sensor.  This should automate ball collection so the drivers just need to, well, drive.

Software has been up to some other tricks as well.  Sensing the target is pretty important in this game, especially as it is at the far end of the playing field and your vision will be partly obscured.  So....they are working on both vision tracking of the reflective targets AND distance sensing.  In fact, the robot should have distance sensors on both front corners so it can read distance and angle to target.  For now these sensors are mounted on "Chairbot" the better to push it around the mock playing field.

And so it goes.  But as with humans so also it is with robots.  With new life comes the passing of the old guard.  Last year's robot being broken down for parts....sniff.

The Aardvark Bait Report

I've decided to report in early on my attempt to punk Facebook by putting out random topics (all starting with the letter A) to try to lure in irrelevant ads...

Hmmm.

Round One looks like a stalemate.  The peculiar on line gaming opportunities featuring winsome elves have gone away.  I actually get a number of ads that relate to relevant things, one of our robotics team sponsors and the on line company from which the team orders T-shirts.

But otherwise, the most common ad I've been seeing is for a company that sells insurance to tree trimmers.  Seriously.....what a niche market and one I have no connection to.  Now, the company's name does start with the word "Arbor" so this might be a harmonic ripple of my "Letter A" campaign.  I can't think of any other plausible explanation.   Maybe I was mumbling when I read the "A-list" into the microphone.

And speaking of computers picking up unwanted data, perhaps I was overly worried about the microphone and camera.  In the first few weeks of 2020 I have gotten many ads for scented candles and Febreeze air freshener.  Maybe there are sensors built into laptops that are entirely covert.

Slightly more concerning is this.  Over the holidays we had company.  One old friend of the family is in the car business.  In the weeks that followed there was a noteworthy uptick in ads for cars...mostly of the brand his company sells.  I keep my locators turned off on phone and computer, but in a gathering that features a number of my facebook friends and frequent email contacts it appears the algorithms were able to piece together enough data to think that this target (friend of these two and in the same room as a person selling this) should be bombarded with suggestions that he needs a new car.

Well let's give it another try.  Next round of Facebook/google bait is brought to you by the letter B.

Baal
Borzoi
Biscotti
Blastomycosis
Baccarat
Binomial equations
Billiards
Butane
Bulgaria
Burmese Pythons

I'll report back in a few weeks.

FIRST Robotics 2020 - Report 2.1

It's always nice to have visible results.  Let's start with those. Images from the middle days of build week two.

Our crew building field elements outdid themselves.  Behold this magnificent and made to specs target tower.  It has since been outfitted with reflective target tape.  It can just be squeezed into our ceiling space.   Software is now working on targeting algorithms.  No fair doing bank shots off the rafters.

We have some new builders who need to learn basics.  While our elaborate custom frame is being designed they modified old components into a functional analog.  This goes to software as a test bed for their work.   Since the best way to learn is to see both the right and wrong ways to do things I hope the cumbersome modifying of beat up parts will make the later (hopefully) smooth assembly of the final version be the work of a pleasant afternoon.  I think the test bed turned out rather well.

We have lots of new components to figure out.  Big time teams meet year round and have five times our numbers.  For us it is "in season" learning and everyone has to wear multiple hats. 

My biggest job this time of year is making sure the team has all the parts they need.  I can usually stay a jump ahead of them....unless they need something really weird.  Which they regularly do.   Time to inventory wheels, pulleys, belts.

Software already has more things figured out this season than in any previous one.  It won't all make it into the 2020 machine but with a young team in rebuilding mode this sort of experimental work will pay off in seasons ahead.

Oh and we have to play around with physical prototypes of ball pick up and launch systems.  We can't count on CAD to do everything virtually!  Pick up prototype version one:

Here's ball shooter version 1.0.  It needs a fair bit of tweaking but was able to hit the target from about 12 feet out.

And finally, the conveyor system that moves the ball from the pickup system to the launcher.  Just loops of surgical tubing driven on shafts.  This version is crude but does work, and there's no reason to doubt we can make a polished version.

So things are moving along.  It's the interplay between physical prototypes and ideal CAD drawings that helps the most.  Already our designers are peering over the test bed and wondering if we can make it "tighter", squeezing the spaces in which the wheels run down another half inch on each side.  With the really exotic mechanisms that are starting to emerge we'll need every bit of it.

Progress as related to earlier seasons?  I think we are about the same.  Crossed fingers regards weather.