OCCRA 2012 Week 3 & Diversity Competition Recap

The third week of OCCRA was a great one, as we competed in the extremely fun Diversity Showcase Competition at South Lyon East High School in South Lyon, Michigan.

The week leading up to the competition was a busy one, as both girls and mentors were trained to drive the robot in the diversity showcase. Also, many modifications were made to the robot to allow our performance to be as good as possible. Some modifications were made to prevent the robot from losing the chain, and the hands were removed to make sure it stays below the weight limit. Tape was added to the bottom roller to make it easier to pick up balls. More tape was also put across the top of the gripper assembly to cover all sharp edges. The robot also underwent preliminary testing of its capability to manipulate and score the large green ball. We did not score with the green ball during the showcase, but we made some solid attempts and hopefully we will be able to score it in the coming competitions.

Girls and mentors trained starting from Wednesday for the Diversity Showcase and on Saturday we had enough girls trained in driving that we were able to loan some out to smaller teams.

The training evidently payed off at the competition, as the girls, mentors, and mixed teams all won both of their matches in the competition. Our boys team performed also, and were able to win both of their matches as well, making for a perfect score throughout the competition! This lead to us winning the first place award at the end of the Showcase. We also tied for a new high score of 28 points in a single match, and our final score of 100 was the highest score in the competition so far. The other teams played fantastically also, with many having final scores very close to ours in what was a very close competition.

The Diversity Showcase allowed us to show off our team’s diversity in more was than just the mixed, girls, and mentors matches, as we participated in our “crazy hat day”. All the AdamBots students wore their craziest hats and we had a lot of fun dancing and cheering while wearing them. We also were honored to take home the “Beautiful Bot” award for the best-looking robot. Overall, the competition was a great success, continuing our success throughout this OCCRA season.

In other news, sub-teams have continued their work throughout the past week.

This week in programming the new students continued to work on a program to calculate the min, max, range, sum, and mean of a set of numbers. The advanced students started working on game ideas for the website, and robot structure for FIRST.

The marketing team started to update our poster. They got a new poster board and re-made every part on the poster to make it look fresh. They focused on changing the team photo, team leader list, and all activity photos, as well as re-making all of the titles. They spent every day this week getting the parts made and together and then finally put it all together on Wednesday.

Animation is learning new animation skills such as the rigging and skinning an object (adding bones to a character). While the computer team worked to develop new clothing for the animation, concept artists worked to improve and create character designs.

New student workshops also continued. During recent workshops, students have learned a variety of practical engineering lessons. The students were taught about the different types of forces that can occur when building a robot and the types of equations they could use to find that force. Another topic discussed at workshops is the principle of lightweight design for robots. Students have also been informed of the purpose of pneumatics and what parts are needed to make them work. The new students have also been learning about how drivetrains, one of the most important components of a robot, work and why they are important on robots. They discussed the types of drivetrains and wheels they use, strengths and weaknesses of the different kinds, and how they are built. These workshops have really helped prepare students for the FIRST season and later engineering endeavors.

Stay tuned for more AdamBots updates, and follow our twitter at https://twitter.com/AdamBots for news and updates posted during competitions. For more photos of our recent competitions, go to our media page at https://www.adambots.com/media-gallery/occra-pictures/2012-occra/2012-occra-pictures/.