Oregon State University District April 3-5, 2014
HIGHLIGHTS On our way down to Corvallis, Oregon we stopped at the Styger Family Dairy in Chehalis, Washington to watch robots milk cows. During alliance selection, the #7 alliance captain Team 1571 "Error 404" selected us and then Team 847 "PHRED" to be on their playoff team. Judges awarded Jacob "J-K" K as a Dean's List finalist at the Pacific Northwest Championship. After our two day robot competition ended, Scott Card of Team 997 "Spartan Robotics" gave us a one hour tour of the Oregon State University.
PARTICIPATION Eight students attended all three days: Aaron J. (programmer and primary driver); Guy B. (human player and alliance coordinator); Jacob “J-K” (team captain, program lead & acting safety captain); Janae N. (scout lead, tee-shirt design, pit emergency supply survey, and build); Josh M. (build captain and driver); Jason W. (pit crew chief, design, and build); Kyle (drive captain, electrical troubleshooter, and build); and Todd M. (scout, assistahttp://webmail.
TRANSPORTATION and OVERNIGHT Thank you to T.James and A.Lang (Lilly’s parents) for providing their bus to transport us to the competition. Thank you to C.Johnson-Pettis and S.Pettis for driving our robot and pit supplies in your 20 foot trailer. Thank you to drivers S. Pettis and A.Walker for getting the team to and from the event. It took one bus and one 20 foot trailer to move the robot team from the welding shop to and from the competition. Thank you A.Walker for organizing two nights lodging at the Best Western Grand Manor Inn in Corvallis.
STYGER FAMILY DAIRY Linda and Andy Styger of the Styger Family Dairy in Chehalis, Washington gave us a tour of their barn where the Lely Astronaut A4 robot milks their 70 cows on a first come, first serve basis. http://www.lely.com/en/
The Styger Family Dairy is the first dairy in Washington State to use a robot to milk their cows. Linda explained that they prefer to produce organic milk for Organic Valley. The only place for the cows to get a nutritious snack is to stand in the milking area. After identifying the cow, the computer determines if the cow was milked in the last six hours. If not, the robot washes her teats (brown to pink), uses lasers to see, and applies suction tubes that do the actual milking. Each teat may supply a different amount of milk. The robot chemically analyzes the milk to aid the Stygers is keeping their cows healthy. Lely used to sell the milking robots for $1 million each. Farmers had to wait months to get one which were made in Sweden. Now the robotic milkers only cost $250,000. Farmers wait weeks while the factory in Iowa builds them. It takes three weeks for a technician to install the robot at the farm. The dairy must already have a milking room built to the correct specifications. Previous to installing the milkers, humans twice a day milked the cows by hand. Linda said it was difficult finding help for a job that was not forty hours a week. Lely is constantly updating the software that controlls the milker. The cows adjusted pretty quickly to the milkers. The humans took a bit longer. Linda mentioned that there will be a need in the future for technicians to maintain the robotic milkers. An article by Amy Watkins in the March 24th Everett Herald alerted Alan Walker to the robots in use at the Styger Family Dairy. http://www.heraldnet.com/
SAFETY When we set up the pit, we placed the fire extinguisher, battery spill kit, and the first aid kit on the back table right hand side (same location as our other district events). One day before our initial competition, the team added graffiti to the first aid kit and battery spill kit so everyone knew what they looked like (thank you Team 2557 SOTAbots for the suggestion). Janae N. interviewed the teams in the pit to determine which team had fire extinguishers, first aid kits and battery spill kits. Jacob "J-K" K. posted this information on the map of the pit. Thank you Safety Captain Brady J. for writing the safety contract and team safety manual. Thank you 4-H Team 3574 High Tekerz C.J. McAnulty and Carrie C for sharing your entire safety plan with us. Our emergency supplies were not used at the Oregon State competition. Our first aid kit was used at our first two competitions. Our battery spill kit was used at the Shorewood competition. In all, our emergency supplies were used three times total at our three events.
PERFORMANCE After match 18 we were 3-1 and heavily damaged: the 5/8" steel shaft hinge for our arms sheared off; the right motor worked only some of the time; and the entire robot would power down and sit for ten seconds and not move. Jason W., Josh M., and Kyle D. worked with Manley in the machine shop to create a new hinge shaft from the extra bar stock we brought along. This included adding a slot and a hole at one end. We would have saved some time had we brought along a detailed drawing of the shaft. S. Pettis investigated our electrical power circuit and discovered a loose wire from our power distribution board to the cRIO. This explained why the robot sat on occasion. With help from student April of Team 4457 ACE Academy, and mentor Terry from Team 847 PHRED, we discovered that our right motor was much hotter than our left motor. They brainstormed what might be wrong with the right motor. Did we add lubrication when we built the transmission? Yes. Does the belt stick during operation? No. The motor may be bad. Together we discussed swapping in a new right motor but this would take much longer that the 25 minutes between matches. We could do this after our last match of the day, except we did not have an extra CIM motor. Team 1425 "Error COde Xero" donated a CIM motor to us. S.Pettis took a look at the power wire to the right hand motor and discovered it was not fully crimped at is Talon motor controller.
We played match 24 without arms but at full power. Our alliance should have lost match 24. In the last ten seconds of the match, our opponents dangerously extended a hand into the playing field for a 50 point penalty. We were now 4-1 with the hinge shaft replacement almost done being machined. We played our next match 28 without arms too. We lost match 28 by nine points. The referees illegally awarded ten truss points to our opponents for an autonomous ball going over the truss during teleop. After the match ended Drive Captain Kyle D. immediately stepped to the question box and lodged a complaint with the head referee. This is the only time the team is allowed to dispute a match. Kyle D. represented our team well. The head referee did not change the match outcome. The replacement shaft now complete, Jason W. and Josh M. reattached the arms. We won our final match of the day to finish the qualification matches Friday at 5-2 and tied for sixth place. The team decided not to replace the right hand motor until Saturday morning.
After replacing the motor, we had high hopes. Unfortunately we went 0-5 on Saturday to wind up at 5-7 overall. In a classy move, Team Captain Jacob “J-K” appointed senior Kyle D. team representative for alliance selection. Team 1571 Error404 from Gresham, Oregon selected us to be on their #7 alliance. They mentioned they were impressed when a representative of Team 5295 (Janae N.) visited them and spoke about alliance selection at the end of day one. Alliance captain Team 1571 also selected Team 847 "PHRED", a tall defensive robot to be on the alliance. We were the top offensive scorer on the alliance. We lost the best of three quarter finals 27-130, 28-0, and 27-150.
ALL COMPETITION RESULTS AVAILABLE AT http://www.thebluealliance.
Our opponent, alliance 2, featured the #2 and #4 seeded robots. They would go on to be on the winning alliance. After we lost the second match, we went back to the pits and slowly took apart the pit. Due to one of the Alliance 2 robots reaching outside the field in the human area (and potentially very dangerous), the referees removed all their points. Very quickly, Teams 1571, 5295 and 847 got back on the field for our third and final match.
DRIVE TEAM Four students participated on the four person drive team: Aaron J. (primary driver), Guy B. (human player feeds ball to robots), Josh M. (secondary driver), and Kyle D. (drive captain). The most important drive position is the cart holder. This team member has the most influence on getting robots on and off the field safely. Guy B. consistently did this. The robot had difficulty picking up the robot. The team made 3 of 4 high truss shots and 2 of 4 high goal shots.
AWARDS Twenty-eight teams competed with us at our third district event, held at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon Friday April 4 8AM to Saturday April 5 6PM. Team 5295 Aldernating Current did not win any awards. Judges interviewed Jason W. and Jacob "J-K" K. as Dean's List nominees of Team 5295. The judges awarded Jacob "J-K" a finalist for the Dean's List Award at the Pacific Northwest Championship.
AUTODESK PACIFIC NORTHWEST CHAMPIONSHIP
Alan Walker made arrangements to get Jacob "J-K" and his grandmother down to the district championship on Saturday at Veteran Memorial Stadium in Portland. The Dean's List judges will use the notes from the district judges to select the six Dean's List finalists for the St.Louis World Championship. Jacob "J-K" will not be reinterviewed.
Our team season is complete. As a rookie, we finished 113th out of 153 Pacific Northwest teams. The top 64 teams will compete at the Pacific Northwest Championship this coming weekend April 9-12 in Portland, Oregon. Both Team 4450 Olympia Robotic Federation and Team 3574 High Tekerz will be competing at the Rose Garden.
PERFORMANCE http://www.thebluealliance.
ROBOT INSPECTION occurred very quickly. We passed robot inspection two hours after requesting inspection. In our two earlier competitions, robot inspection took five or six hours to pass.
BUMPERS The team expended very little pit time on the bumpers. The red bumpers sometimes had a loose flap that dragged on the ground. Referee K.Saxton asked the robot inspectors to review our bumpers. Jason W. and Josh M. had the machine shop make some angles to help pull the bumpers a bit higher off the ground. Janae N. is designing a new method to build bumpers in the future.
PIT CREW The team worked as a well oiled machine. Aaron J., Guy B., Janae N., Jason W., Josh M., Kyle D. and Todd M. worked well together. Jason W. again coordinated on arm reconstruction with the machine shop, the third event he has had this task. In a fantastic act of Gracious Professionalism, Team 1425 "Error Code Xero" donated a CIM motor to us which we used all day Saturday. We returned the motor to them after we were eliminated from competition.
BATTERIES Batteries were topped off Wednesday and again Thursday. The team learned to keep one good battery in the bottom of the robot cart. The team electrically insulated (via electrical tape) the battery terminals where they connect with the pigtail.
PHOTOGRAPHY If you have pictures or video of Team 5295, please send them to me at AlanWalker@earthlink.net and I will ask our webmaster Lilly J. to add them to our website, http://
ROBOT TEAM MEETINGS
Shelton High School is on break this week April 7-11. Our next team meeting will be Monday, April 14th. We will create our spring goals and determine our future meeting schedule. Robot team meetings are typically Mondays (except following a district event), Wednesdays and Thursdays from 2:30PM-6:30PM in the welding shop at Shelton High School, 3737 N. Shelton Springs Road, Shelton WA 98584. We also meet most Saturdays from 9AM-5PM. With advance notice, there is a North Mason shuttle. All are welcome.
OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY TOUR
Scott Card of local Corvallis Team 997 Spartan Robotics gave us a tour of the university. OSU has 23,000 undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students. One quarter of all students are engineering majors. Scott is a dual education and german major. The school is just over two square miles, 30 blocks by thirty blocks. The engineering department helped design the Mars Rover robot. The son of Manley, the machinist who fabricated the replacement shaft for our arms, was part of the Mars Rover design team.
OFFICIAL WEBSITE http://oregonstate.edu/
FIRST SCHOLARSHIPS
For 2014, FIRST has over 170 confirmed scholarship providers that are making available almost 900 individual scholarship opportunities with a total value of more than $19 million. FIRST scholarships are funded and administered by the scholarship providers (colleges, universities, corporations, etc.) not by FIRST. Each have unique eligibility requirements, deadline dates, and application procedures. Scholarships are usually for use at a specific college or university, but a few can be used at any school. Most are merit-based and cover a broad range of scholastic abilities. Roughly 35% of FIRST scholarhips can be used for any course of study. Values range from one-time $500 awards to full four-year tuition ($160,000 value).
SCHOLARSHIP LIST http://www.usfirst.org/about/
SCHOLARSHIP LIST http://www.usfirst.org/about/
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS http://www.usfirst.org/
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