Team 007 Update: Week 2 Progress
Last Saturday, we made huge progress with the design of the robot. We finally have a decision on the wheels and most of the structure. The team has chosen 8″ wheels because 10″ would have been a bit involved in this short build. The frame design is complete and Paul (a retired engineer from Northrop Grumman who has been a mentor for Team 007 for 4 years) will work with the students today to begin building it. The fame will be completed by tomorrow. The turret has been drawn; we just need some testing to finalize the angle/compression needed. We chose to go with a belt system of bringing the balls to the shooter. Now we need to get exact dimensions so we can order and build the belts or polycords. Just a few details to hammer out and we will have a winning robot!
Our students are staying very busy! For example, Mike W. (and Mr. Coppolino) made a list of motors and sensors needed so the programmers can begin writing the code. Sarah Y. is modeling the robot in CAD for detail parts and measurements. Hamna A. is making physical drawings as well.
Essentially, week two was a design week, which will be important for the rest of the season since these designs (both physical and CAD) will be referred to for building.
Team 007, signing out!
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Team 007 Update: Week 1 Progress
Team 007 (pronounced “double O’seven,” like James Bond) has made great progress during the 2012 FIRST build season! Kick-off day (the first day of the build season) was on January 7th, the first Saturday of the new year. On the first day, four students went down to Capitol College to pick-up the kit of parts and to watch the live video feed of the new game on NASA TV. While they watched the feed at the college, the rest of the 30+ students and the mentors had a private viewing at the Towson army recruiting office, the place we have dubbed “Parkville Northwest.” This year’s game is “Rebound Rumble” and, essentially, we have to design a robot to play basketball. We spent the first day or so brainstorming, and then moved to hand drawing all of our ideas. Currently we are building prototypes and testing designs. We have the base of our robot designed (to scale) in foam and various prototypes up and running, including a basketball shooter inspired by a softball pitching machine. There have even been developments with figuring out how to get the Xbox Kinect to find the locations of the baskets, aim, and shoot basketballs! In addition to progress with the robot, we have also made advancements with our outreach programs, cultural diversity acknowledgements, and web developments. This year we have put a lot of focus into our outreach programs. After the immature death of our team member, Ryan Chase, we have decided to put our focus into improving the sidewalk conditions around the school. We are in the process of sending a letter to David Marks, the delegate who put in sidewalks in Perry Hall, to ask for his advice as we partake in this endeavor. Also, the team has undergone a tremendous bonding experience as we all eat dinner. See, dinners with Team 007 are not simply about food; they are for learning about different cultures. Every student has to sign-up for at least two nights to bring dinner for the team. This produces quite a variety and we get to learn about different cultures based on the unique dishes the families bring in. For example, one night we had a spicy cuisine that was a traditional dish (and a delicious one, too!) of one of our Asian students. We have to have a wide variety of food to cater to our team’s unique needs, such as our vegan and vegetarian members. Furthermore, our website team has been working hard on the new and improved Team 007 website. Please visit team007.org to check out our progress! (Well, since you are already here, feel free to look around!)
So far, it has been a very productive year and with (almost) half of the build season over, we know that the challenges are just beginning. We are up for the challenge.
-Team 007, signing out!
