FIRST Week is Over :P

Yup. This first week of the FIRST build season is almost over. Here's a quick recap of what we've done so far:
- Designed our drive train (modification of last year's which is a modification of the year before's)
- Designed our current grabber and arm (pictures and discussion available at http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?p=555540#post555540)
- Started machining the drive train, and done all work available until we get parts from McMaster.
- As of tonight, cut down the aluminum for the arm. Now we're waiting for more welding gas so we can weld them to the drive train (once it's also complete).
- Designed the electronics board and started modeling it.
- Cleaned the lab! Yup, you heard me right, cleaned the lab! Danny, Danny and Guy cleaned it up to usable state. Don't mess it up!

As for the rest of the weekend, we'll hopefully order components soon and get some welding gas, so more significant work can be done. Our tentative schedule is to have the drive train done by next weekend, have the arm done by a week later, and then build backups and new designs while programming gets to code and the drivers get practice.

In other news, Mike, Danny and Guy visited the Gunn Robotics Team lab today. We marveled at the size of their lab (a nice few times larger than ours) and conversed about this year's game. After we ate dinner with them, we got to look around some more, share ideas, stare at the full-scale rack they built, and plan for the future. Look forwards to us hosting a bunch of GRT members in our lab, and for more collaboration in the future. We plan to go over there to test our bot on their rack, have multiple autonomous modes tests, as well as invite more teams for practice matches of some scale.

So make your way to the lab as early and often as possible, and help out! There's always more work to do. If you're not affiliated with the team and want to learn/ask/donate/come over, feel free to email me (Guy, your writer) at guydav2002@yahoo.com

FIRST Kickoff 2007!

Long time, no see you FIRST...

And so it's Kickoff day 2007. Three of the team captains, another member, and the team mentor traveled to the local kickoff in San Jose State University. After a set of long, tiring, and somewhat interesting speeches this year's challenge was unveiled: Rack N' Roll. The new game excited us all, and we brainstormed ideas during the drive back to the lab.

We assembled in the lab around noon to start a formal brainstorming discussion. As more and more embers piled into the classroom, we showed the game video a few times and soon enough everyone knew the rules of the game. As it turns out, the new drive train design fits the game well, and we will hence start building it soon. Out of multiple scoring ideas that include claws, rollers, arms and belts, we picked one and we've even started prototyping today! That must be some team record about the earliest work has ever started.

In other build news, a small team led by Blake and Rasmus build a few of the 'spider legs'. Their contribution will certainly make testing easier once we have a working drive train and superstructure. Also, members Danny and Zach built one of the autonomous tracking light boxes.

Our strategy division members David and Guy started brainstorming and writing code for our two strategy programs, SECOND and THIRD. SECOND helps collect and parse intelligence in real-time, and THIRD help the coach (probably Guy) track a match as it goes and find the 'best plays'. More updates when we have what to update.


For pictures from today and of today's work, check out our photo album. This will be updated every few days with more photos, so be sure to check us out for updates.

It was a very tiring and long first day to FIRST '07, and we can't wait for many more to come!

Initial Post

This is our picture, celebrating our win of the Las Vegas regional competition. We are Paly Robotics, and this is our blog. This blog will be used to share information with team members, other teams and our sponsors about what Paly Robotics is doing. The second main use of this blog is to log our progress during the upcoming 2007 FIRST Robotics season.