Friends of Gatorbotics

Why I coach these girls . . .

2008-03-02T11:22:00.001-08:00

Onwards and upwards!

2008-02-06T22:56:00.000-08:00

Apologies for not having blogged in a really long time. We’ve made a lot of progress albeit some pretty interesting setbacks, which is expected in all programs of this sort. I definitely think that experiencing a setback, dealing with it emotionally and moving on is an excellent experience for anyone to have at an early age. One of the other mentors mentioned something – we all learned to walk when we were babies by falling down. Some of the girls are lucky enough to have gone through elementary and secondary school without having to really try, and have perhaps forgotten the feeling of learning to walk by falling down and picking oneself up. The first time one falls again comes as a hard thud and then we learn that it is part of growing again. I’m excited because I saw it happen in the last ten days and everyone is on a roll again. This is perhaps lesson that a smart young woman can learn from being part of this robotics team – I value it above learning the technical aspects of robot building.

Here’s where we are in terms of robot building . . .

Chassis: Hahaha. I was banging my head against a wall on Friday evening after Mark Siminoff (senior IDEO engineer and leader) came and pointed out that Jim and I needed to drive all the mecanum wheels independently. Jim and I had run ahead and set up the mecanum wheels as if they were regular wheels in tank steering style. Once I drew the free body diagram, I realized where we had gone astray. No big deal. We tested out the tank steering on Saturday afternoon with some simple button driven drive code that Caroline and Erin worked with me to write (press a button to determine direction and the amount of joystick tilt determines magnitude). The chassis sounds like the mouse that roared with the mecanum wheels!

As of Wednesday, we have the chassis hooked up for four wheel drive. We had an extra two gearboxes which we bought for backup, but are using now. Caroline, Sherri and Erin put together drive code that we almost got working today. I think we need to cut the fat from their code i.e. strip all the default code examples because something is overwriting their PWM outputs. I think they are close though. I’m excited to see them ‘close the loop’ with the system finally. Thanks to Jessa and Karlin for their support of the programming team!

Arm: Alas, Kerk Motion Products has not been nice to us. I accomodated Jimmy’s enthusiasm by working out a deal with Mcmaster to get a 24” teflon coated lead screw (four starts, two turns per inch). However, Kerk, even after Mcmaster requested that they ship overnight, shipped the damn lead screw via ground. So it is currently somewhere between New Jersey and Chicago on a truck. And I ordered it on January 22! In any case, we’ve purchased a backup acme precision lead screw and nut from Mcmaster that should arrive tomorrow to drive our arm.

Meanwhile, Nandini and Anne did a superb job of putting together an ACTUATED arm prototype which they built out of 80-20 and piano hinges. I am really impressed with their ability to make the leap into prototyping. This is the first time I’ve seen in four years a build team proactively hooking up an actuator to their mechanism and driving it. How cool. In the process, we learned that we need to gear up (speed up) the follower sprocket on the lead screw. The motor currently runs at 45 RPM = 0.75 revs per second. For 0.5 inches per rev, it takes us forever to go up 20 inches, 30 seconds precisely, which is like the majority of the 2.5 minute game. So, we’re planning to gear up at least by a factor of four (down to eight seconds of travel), if not a factor of six (five seconds of travel). We have plenty of torque (limited by the 150 lb load that the lead screw nut can take). Nandini and Anne worked out the lead screw problem on the whiteboard.

Today, Jim and the gals got their heads around some of the issues in building the tower to support the arm. A lot of it was about geometry, and part of it was about what to choose as a material. Do we use 1X1X1/8” wall thickness aluminum or 1/16” wall thickness? Jim put lengths of both material in a vice and hung 10 lb weights off the end of the lengths. Everyone got a chance to push down on the cantilever beam and develop an intuitive sense of bending stiffness and strength. This is what I mean by intuitive engineering!

Gripper: Kudos to Tiffany Card for working with the girls this weekend on ProE to get a better sense of a number of gripper mechanisms and methods of actuation. I think we’re still looking at both linear and rotation actuation as well as grippers that have appendages that move in parallel or pivot about a point.

Once we have the arm and the tower set up, I think we can build on top of it pretty easily. Certainly this is not necessary how I would lead an internal IDEO program, but having accepted and come to terms with the sculptural aspect of robot building, I’m pretty excited and have a lot of faith that the intuitive that the build team and the mentors have developed via PCV and foam core prototypes will really help to inform us in the final design as we ‘sculpt’ it.

Electronics: Big cheers to Doug Bourn for helping us swap the SMT resistors on the bad gear tooth sensor board. It was great for Erin, Neli, Ginna and Arushi to watch Doug use solder wick and pop those tiny resistors off the PCB and swap them. We did get both GTS sensors working and the group of us hooked everything up to a power supply and watched the pulse on the oscilloscope on Monday.

Neli and Ginna also learned how to strip wire and crimp on lugs and today, Ginna and Doug built a control box for switching in and out of autonomous. I think Neli and Ginna are well on their way to helping us put together a well organized electronics board this year (which we really need to do – our pile of wires is starting to get a little scary).

Anyhow, things are going well with 12 days left. This being my third time through it, I think the emotional rollercoaster is a lot more predictable now. I hope that the girls are learning this too!

Can’t wait until the lead screws are delivered tomorrow morning. Robotics is really my excuse to geek out, code, build stuff, and tinker without the heavy responsibility of running a program at work. Thanks to everyone for your patience, generosity, support and food!

Don’t forget to check out our photo gallery here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/castilleja.robotics

Let’s start building!

2008-01-24T23:19:00.000-08:00

Apologies for not having reported back for some time. We made a lot of progress on the design front in the last two weeks. I’m always excited to visit Casti because the gals always have a new prototype to share when I get there. On Saturday, Jim talked about using the KerK lead screw and by Wednesday, the gals had finagled an 80-20 version of the arm with all the pivots and slides working!

The game plan for the next week: Build the chassis with Jim and reassemble the kit chassis so that programming can work in parallel. This means we have to:

* Go buy all the materials that we need for Jim to start putting stuff together with us. This means a trip to Alan Steel on Monday, January 28 @ 3:00 pm. Caroline is putting together a cut list for 1X1 and 1X2 6061T6 aluminum square tube stock.

* Getting together a list of stuff to buy from Mcmaster for delivery by Monday. This includes long axles, flanged bearings to fit into the meccanum wheels, extra master chain links, extra sprockets and any other fasteners we would need.

* Planning and getting any long lead items like the 24” Kerk Motion Lead Screw (BZ8050T) through Mcmaster. This should be arriving next Friday. Eeek.

* Taking off the new stuff from the kit chassis i.e. the gear boxes and putting on previous years stuff so that we can start building the new chassis. While waiting for the new chassis to be built, we can experiment with the meccanum wheels as well.

* Start building this year’s electronics board. We can put it on a piece of corrugated plastic again. We should have this ready to go to hook up to all the motors before the chassis is done!

* We gotta start looking at our weight! Check out photos of the motors and wheels on the scale on our picasa site.

Chassis: I think the gals have settled on building a four-wheel drive chassis with four meccanum wheels. This should be really exciting and interesting this year. We took a look at what the frame should look like this year given the stack up of the 3” thick meccanum wheels and the associated sprockets and fasteners.

Jessa and Doug did some serious thinking on the driving code on Wednesday which is cool. I think it’s time to start coding up driving.c and getting the interrupts working while the Ann, Nandini and the build team work together to get the meccanum wheels and the kit chassis assembled.

Arm: Looks like we can do a power screw drive on an arm (third class lever – effort between fulcrum and load), which should give us more precision and less backdriving than with the usual sprocket and chain. I am concerned that we’ll need to be able to fold the arm back up at the end of a match when we take the robot off the field. We’ll be using the Taigene van door motor, and likely doubling the output speed to 100 RPM (since we only travel 0.5 inches per revolution of the nut). The Kerk Motion products triangular nut limits us to a 150 lb load, which at an 80% efficiency leaves us with 120 lb. We can probably safely place the pivot point at ¼ the length of the arm (20 lb at tip X 4 = 80 lbs at pivot, not including all the inefficiencies).

Serious math this weekend going on with David and Tiffany. I think David taught an entire statics class in an afternoon to the kids with a foam core prototype of the linkage. And then Eric pitched in working with Tobi to figure out how much load the lead screw could support.

Gripper: A bunch of our initial prototypes out of PVC and foam core helped us to understand just how gianormous this part needs to be. We’re struggling to figure out how two or three pronged gripper is going to start inside the starting dimensions (28X38X60). It needs two extra layers of actuation just to do this (passive or active I do not know). I think our goal is to get the chassis and the arm up and running soon and then develop and attach the gripper separately at the end.

We have 26 days left (19 days in). I am definitely feeling the pressure to move towards building! Thanks to all the parents and mentors for their support!

Emily

The promise of variety

2008-01-16T22:38:00.000-08:00

My favorite days mentoring are those that involve a little bit of everyone – something mechanical, something electrical and something involving programming. It reminds me of the complexity of the problem these girls are trying to solve and how much fun a multifaceted problem really is.

Jessa, Doug, David and I were there today. The teams have made some excellent progress on all accounts. Annie and Divya took my homework assignment seriously and actually built a small scale model of not only the overpass but of the mechanism they have been thinking about for lifting the ball out of popsicle sticks and a baseball to represent the game piece. These gals are smart. Real smart. I was also touched that Sherri and Caroline took it upon themselves to build a gripper out of PVC. I really do suspect that once we show them a way to prototype or a way to do things, the exposure is enough for them to take it and run with it. It’s getting over the hurdle of knowing what to do that is hard. I don’t think they suffer very much from what Bob Sutton calls the ‘knowing-doing’ gap.

For dinner entertainment, I pulled up a few sketches in Solidworks to try to explain four bar linkages to the kiddos as it applies to designing their lift. I emphasized that Solidworks is a tool to help them make decisions and I think that using the 2D sketching features would benefit them greatly in figuring out some of the geometries they are trying to build. Jimmy and I had a good working discussion today over lunch (as he was waiting to get through online to get burning man tickets nonetheless) and we’re interested in some sort of four-bar linkage or scissor lift. David brought up the extendable ladder mechanism which I think we can do easily with a winch. He also had a good point about those great drawer tracks you can get from home depot. Perhaps we can use drawer tracks along with one side of the scissor lift to give it some stability, especially near the load. More later on this.

While David coached Ann and Nandini on the prototype chassis assembly, Doug and I chatted with the gals about a few important electronics / programming topics including PWM and duty cycle, how moving the joystick translates to a motion in the chassis, and some ways to work around the over responsiveness of Scottie (last year’s robot). Driving Scottie, I suspect, is a bit like trying to fly a helicopter. Scottie was EXTREMELY sensitive because, to my awe and surprise, apparently the girls took the input signal from the joystick, CUBED it (took it to the power of 3 / talk about serious processing meltdown) and then divided it again by some number. Doug then had a great point about using a lookup table instead, so you are guaranteed with an output within your boundary conditions and a lot quicker processing. Doug and I also talked about using an accumulator and other time-based strategies to reduce noise in the signal.

We also sat down and wrote code on the board. Mentors who are interested in coding, please let me know and I will get you a copy of the compiler and default code. I can walk you through the default code (it is messy). Albeit the big family of c and h-files, the girls should only be concerned with modifying user_routines.c and user_routines_fast.c (for autonomous / hybrid period). In the context of programming an accumulator, we talked about global variables, constants and arrays. I actually think we should encourage them to work on categorizing their functions into library files like driving.c / driving.h, lift.c / lift.h and gripper.c / gripper.h so the components can be developed by separate coders and then incorporated into the program. Then default_routine (void) as a function can be kept very simple and clean. I would actually like one of us to strip user_routines.c down to the foundation so that all this extraneous code doesn’t overwhelm the kids.

This was definitely a good day. We have momentum. I know the kiddos are worried about not having designs locked down yet and feel behind, but heck, neither does my project at work! We’ll figure it out soon. I’ll be there Saturday. See everyone there!

End of Week One

2008-01-13T22:11:00.000-08:00

This is really déjà-vu for me blogging again. We started up these blogs at the beginning of the 2006 season and they’ve morphed into and out of use and back into use again over the last two years. The purpose of these blogs are to keep the mounds of people who support this robotics teams either daily, weekly or monthly caught up on news so that we can all dive right in when we are together at Castilleja. Sherri has committed from the student team to blog regularly and I have committed from the mentor team to do the same.

After a tough first week, I think we’re on a roll. I do believe that the key to success mentoring this team is to get them hands on with problem solving and to let their intuition guide them once they start experimenting through this design phase. Fearless team leader Erin O’Malley just got back yesterday from a long journey to India, so give her a hug or high five when you see her! Here’s where we are . . .

OVERALL TEAM OPS: Running much more smoothly. It’s a really tough year because we have a lot of newbies and a lot of mentors. The girls who are leading want to get into the nitty gritty of designing but they have to manage us big kids AND the little kids and give us something to do. On Saturday afternoon, the mentors and the team leads had a meeting, and we decided that for the next two weeks, to try tackling the design with small teams focused on one part, rather than keeping everyone within their discipline (i.e. build, programming etc.).

CHASSIS / OPERATOR INTERFACE: (Caroline, Sherri, Allie, Anne, David (Mentor)) Lots of progress this weekend. The team is building a prototype chassis with the kit of parts with all the motors and electronics attached so that they can start working on the coding, which I think is a brilliant idea. They had a lot of driving issues with Scottie last year, a lot of which I think can be solved using smoothing algorithms (moving averages, PID controllers). Also, David mentioned that he’s used a yaw sensor to detect slipping so that we can also adjust for straight driving using electronics and code. We also have two gear tooth sensors that can be mounted to equalize the two sides of the chassis (Doug worked on this with interrupts two years ago and I still have the notes on flipping bits in the registers).

** We can also work on the input side – Jimmy and I have been chatting about tank drive (having two single axis inputs vs. one two axis input, which is really confusing). Karlin found that http://www.ifirobotics.com/ already has a USB board that makes it possible to connect all sorts of other input devices to the operator interface. The easiest way to do this right now is to take the two joysticks provided and to constrain their motion to only one axis (y-axis), read only that input and let a driver try using two of them at the same time. Fun problem.

** Goals for the week: The girls are planning to have the prototype chassis finished by sometime middle of this week. They are currently using wheels from two years ago and the same gear box and motors from two years ago. They had some issues finding bolts long enough today and are going to have to move their electronics board out of the way to the back in order to screw the gear boxes to the frame, but their close. The electronics look like they are all hooked up and can turn on (please note they are using the robot controller from 2005, which means when they compile, they need to make sure they compile for the PIC18F8520 (pre-2006) and not the PIC18F8722 (post-2006). They will likely also need help with the chain and tensioning it. They are also working with Ms. Mourad to get these omnidirectional wheels (http://www.andymark.biz/am-0083.html) Really hot stuff.

I’m really looking forward to debugging system issues on this prototype chassis (get all the code and sensors hooked up) before the real chassis gets built!! Go team.

LIFT / CLAW: (Nandini, Erin, Anne, Emily (Mentor), Karlin (Mentor)) Good progress this week. I worked with newcomers Annie, Divya and Crystal to build a portion of the overpass field element today (see photo below). This really helped us to experience what it like to manipulate the ball (like put it on and push it off) its sitting position. We discovered that it’s actually pretty easy to push off from below by just running into it with some momentum using first, Annie’s forehead, and then pieces of 80-20 and PVC pipe.

** In the last week, we’ve been bouncing a number of ideas. Jimmy and I have talked about elevator lifts and four bar linkages which help us start within the 60” tall X 38” width boundary and still be able to reach up beyond 78” with a claw. Fundamentally I am pretty concerned about the center of mass of the 40” diameter trackball. I think the more time we can drive around and keep it above our CG the better.

** Nandini spent a lot of time with David on Saturday exploring a good number of options for the claw. They explored the option of the claw having three actuated prongs, and then three prongs with only one active to clasp it. Nandini also had an interesting idea based on a tarp and a draw string, and finally, she has some really good thoughts on using rollers at the ends of the arm / gripper to keep the ball in place once in possession and to also expel the ball when ready. Thanks to Nandini for catching us up over the phone today and to Crystal for calling her.

** Annie, Crystal, Divya and I, after discovering the power of pushing from below, took a look at a solution based on a windmill. The pivot point would be high up and the two windmill arms tucked within the starting volume would rotate out to push and catch the trackball coming off the overpass all in one motion of driving through under the overpass at a fast speed. (VIDEO: Click here) . Divya came up with the idea of having a second smaller scoop type mechanism at the base of the robot that can get the trackball off the ground and into a position that the big windmill can scoop up and drop onto the overpass in order to hurdle. I’m having them prototype the system with ¾” PVC (they have a stash in the science project room in the back, along with a PVC cutter) now.

** So, I think all solutions are still on the table, but I would encourage everyone to start moving to wood, PVC etc. in 1:1 scale. I also pulled up Solidworks and used sketches to demonstrate the path of a linkage / arm and have them guide me while sketching changes. We also, with Doug’s speedy help, managed to get the portion of the overpass that we built at the right height (it’s tall) and sturdy enough for now. You’ll have to put it together outside in the walkway since with the ball on it, it’s way higher than the classroom ceilings.

OTHER STUFF: Keep us posted on your schedule. Thanks to Karlin for putting up the Google Calendar. I’ll be there on Wednesday night by 5:30 pm. See everyone next week for more fun!

Em

The Rack is Rising!

2007-01-22T21:35:00.001-08:00

Thank you to all the Mentors and parents who have worked so hard over the past 3 days - even missing the NFL Conference Games - to build the Rack and the Crate. Doug, David, George, George, Richard, Beth, Debbie - you rock!

Parents Corner

2007-01-19T17:23:00.000-08:00

The 2007 FIRST season is in full swing, and our Gatorbotics team is working hard. Parents, you can check here for the latest schedules etc. Just click on the links on your right to find out what each sub team is up to!

2006-05-03T10:34:00.000-07:00

Dearest mentors, parents and friends of Gatorbotics:

The 2006 season of Gatorbotics has come to a wonderfully satisfying close. A team of fourteen young women have just returned from Atlanta , GA where they were invited to compete in the US FIRST national championships for a second year in a row. This is an incredible honor on top of everything these students have accomplished this year. Thank you once again for your dedication and support!

Some highlights of the season:

* The students shipped a fully built autonomous capable robot, complete with sensors and actuators, on February 21, after six weeks of gruelling hard work. Along with this, they submitted a 30 second animation created in 3Dstudio Max, an engaging and well-designed website, and an articulate essay submission for the chairman's award.

* Twelve students and a handful of adults found their way to the Pacific Northwest Regional Competition in Portland , OR the first weekend of March 2006. This team was the first to score a goal in the autonomous period of a match at this regional. Perhaps having shown their cards early, opposing teams then left Rosie the robot with more than a few bumps and bruises. Yet the girls persevered, fall after fall, and worked through trials and tribulations of drive train problems, autonomous code difficulties and more on their own. The team walked away from the Portland competition winning the PNR Regional KPCB Entrepreneurship Award and a real drive to take their learnings to their home competition.

* On their home turf and armed with experience and strategy, the students competed in the Silicon Valley Regional Competition during the third weekend of March. After tweaking their autonomous code, adding bumpers and finding a way to get themselves up the ramp, the girls' efforts paid off. They came out of the first day of gruelling qualifying rounds ranked 3 rd out of 40 teams, behind the two most well-regarded veteran teams 114 (Los Altos) and 254 (Bellarmine). After pairing up with 114 and 1641 (Mojave High) to form the second seeded alliance, they made it to the semi-finals. In the end, the students managed to pick up the SVR Regional KPCB Entrepreneurship Award. But to our incredible surprise and honor, Gatorbotics was also awarded the SVR Regional Engineering Inspiration Award , coming in second place in the most prestigious Chairman's Award competition for their well-roundedness, and their efforts to spread the FIRST values in their community through publicity, outreach and recruiting. This is unbelievable for a second year team. This also won the team a berth to nationals . . . again!

* After a short break, the girls attended the US FIRST national championships at the Georgia Dome last week along with 344 teams from 17 different countries. It was incredibly inspiring to be there and spend time in the pits with hundreds of talented rookie and veteran teams, students, parents, teachers and mentors. The girls finished a very respectable 48 out of 86 teams in the Galileo Division, and started collecting many ideas for the off season. While relaxing and watching the final matches and awards ceremony, to their utter surprise, the team discovered that they were selected for the Daimler Chrysler Spirit Award for their extraordinary enthusiasm and spirit through an exceptional partnership and teamwork. To be chosen out of 344 teams for one of twentysome awards is quite an honor!

And so ends the season with a real bang! We aimed high and finished FIRST. Keep in touch with our off season activities through our webpage ( www.gatorbotics.com) and blogs ( http://gatorbotics-build.blogspot.com/).

All the best,

Hannah, Sophia and Emily

Maker Faire: Technology on your time

2006-04-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone, it's been a while since we've blogged huh? Kersten, Beth, George, Debbie, Ryan, Eric and myself headed out to the Maker Faire at the San Mateo Fairgrounds yesterday to see blinky bugs, egg plotters, a giant 18 foot walking robotic giraffe, a fire spitting machine and much much more. I loved it - a place where geekistry and artistry unite! Hopefully we can do more field trips like this in the future!

Kersten and I started off milling around in the main hall. After getting a real steal of a deal with a pile o' seriously strong permanent rare earth magnets (they make very good and somewhat painful earrings), we checked out Bruce Shapiro's nifty machines (www.taomc.com). Bruce Shapiro is an interaction designer / engineer / inventor who designs really neat pieces that fundamentally boil down to 'The Art of Motion Control' (TAOMC). Using old stepper motors off of ebay (stepper motors, unlike servo motors, are open loop motors that you can very accurately send to a specified angular position), he has built things like the eggplotter, which puts my easter egg decorations to shame, and the robotic ribbon dancer. My other favorite from his display was the etch-a-sketch mechanism - he figured out how to 'bit bang' out the parallel port of an old computer, which allows him to covert really amazing patterns and drawings from the computer to the stepper motors which turn the knobs that drive the etch-a-sketch. Soooo cool. I want to try this.

Then, we trotted across to see the blinkybug display (www.blinkybug.com) by ken Murphy, Chief Bugmaker. This would be a really easy and really fun project to do sometime. A blinkybug only needs two LEDs, a NiCad battery and holder, and some guitar strings (or music wire). If you look closely, when the guitar strings are blown by the wind, they close the circuit and ground the LED, making the LED come on! All the parts can be purchased from Digikey for like $10.00 a bug I bet.

There were several (muhahahahahah) potential sponsors for Gatorbotics there yesterday as well, including Metal Supermarkets, Surplus Center, and a Steve Wozniak playing Segway Polo. Kersten used her womanly charm to charm up a conversation with the dude at Metal Supermarkets (apparently they have a location in Redwood City somewhere). Given that aluminum goes for about $4.00 a pound right now, how cool would it be if they could donate, hmm . . . like 25 lbs or so of angle iron, plate, and square tubing? On that note, Beth and Kersten chatted up the people at the Crucible (www.thecrucible.org) with the loud noisemaking red fire engine about welding classes and such. Welding aluminum is a pain in the butt unless you're jimmy, but steel is a great thing to start with! Classes anyone? They're upwards of $300 each for 16-20 hours of instruction (can be done in a weekend). On that note, I'm not sure we can actually set up a welding area AT casti - and especially not in the woodworking shop, but here's an alternative: www.techshop.ws. I ran into this dude named Jim Newton, who wants to open a community prototyping shop in south bay. Once you learn how to use the tools and contribute a membership fee, you're covered to use any of the tools (mill, lathe, welding equipment etc.) there. This might be a great alternative since IDEO insurance unfortunately disallows non IDEO people to use the big tools.

My other favorite picks from the day included LUNAR (the Livermore Unit of the National Association of Rocketry). I have a soft spot for rockets and these guys have some serious stuff going on, like a two stage rocket that they hope to fly up 20 miles from ground. All their rockets are solid fuel (very dangerous since you can't stop the rocket once its started, unless you make it self destruct by blowing it up from inside). Nevertheless, apparently once or twice a year, this group congregates in Black Rock, Nevada to launch something on the order of 300 rockets, everything from Estes kit rockets to giant big momma custom made rockets. Eric and I were reminiscing on the days we spent making our own graphite nozzle and trying to figure out theoretically what the throat area and input and output angles should be. Ahhhh . . . mmmm . . . turning graphite on the lathe . . . (don't do it without someone holding a vacuum cleaner over you).

Final two memorable displays (although there were many more): d.tools and Bathsheba sculpture. D.tools is a Stanford computer science project that is supremely cool. Imagine if you're an interaction designer. You're building a new microwave and you're trying to figure out if it's better for the user to have three buttons and a display screen or five buttons and just two simple LED 7-segment displays. You know nothing about electronics, but you want to build a prototype so that you can invite your friends to try it out. D.tools is a plug and play system that allows you to plug in sensors and actuators and basically mock up a bad-ass prototype without knowing anything. My favorite example that came out of this was built by a dude named Nan (I ran into sooo many people I know, or should know but my name remembering mechanism sucks). Nan built a little prototype that allowed you to 'pour' paint from paint buckets onto a screen to 'mix' colors and then use that color. The 'paint' buckets had tilt sensors in them so that the computer knows when you're pouring, and the LCD screen was also plug and play. I want one of these kits!!! Bathsheba sculpture (www.bathsheba.com) finally, is a 3D sculpture company that takes advantage of modern technology to sculpt AMAZING things - like coral. Kersten and I talked about 3D printing and lots of TLA (three letter acronyms) like SLA (stereolithographic apparatus) and FDM (fuse deposition manufacturing). Imagine being able to squirt little bits of liquid plastic and 'print' a 3D shape from it!

And I haven't even started to talk about the neon sign making demonstration, the tesla coil and the jacob's ladder by John Dyer!

Next year's Maker Faire is definitely going to be on my calendar! See you there again!

Em

Ship date has arrived . . .

2006-02-21T01:32:00.000-08:00

State of robotics 1:00 am ship date: Soooper troopers Shirin, Sophia and Chrissy stayed on and persisted until they witnessed a bit of a miracle. Rosie drove itself out of its starting position, turned left in the middle of the field, headed towards the goal and shot two balls into the goal, all on her own accord.

That’s some serious perseverance.

Ed came by with a leaner meaner cart, Jimmy lended a hand yet again with the hopper and made it easier to load balls into, Doug and Eric came by for EE and software support, and multiple parents, which included Shirin’s entire family, dropped by to bring food and good things.

It’s really cold in the gym. The electric blanket really helps. A spot of the couch really helps too.

Goodnight.

2006-02-19T01:13:00.000-08:00

It's been a whirlwind of a week.

I'm overwhelmed and amazed by the generosity of so many people - Jim Feuhrer for stepping up this week pulling through a full seven days of midnight departures to build the hopper and the ramp, rebuild the turret plate, and mount multiple sensors, George Schnurle for coming by to give moral support and good humor even though his daughter is 3000 miles away, Doug Bourn for somehow managing to find time to come by even though he is up against an even tighter and tougher deadline at Tesla Motors, Eric Macintosh for some serious coding prowress, Bud Delisle for being there for the girls, Chris Countryman for animation advice and helping me in my braindead state to implement an RC switch debounce, George Aye for coming ALL the way from Chicago to offer his rendering expertise to Shirin, Beth Schnurle, Debbie Hara, and Heidi Crone for their undying wisdom, encouragement and support, and of course, David Berger for the famous quiche that keeps me coming back for more.

More here: http://gatorbotics-build.blogspot.com/2006/02/under-hood.html

Pulling your own weight

2006-02-13T11:14:00.000-08:00

I will pull my weight if you pull your weight. This applies not only to the students but also to the mentors, parents and teachers involved. It is realistic to point out that in the majority of project teams and organizations I’ve been in, there is dead weight. These are people who claim that they are capable of taking responsibility and delivering on their promises, but don’t live up to their claims. This is ignorance, arrogance and stupidity to put it frankly. I have all the respect in the world for people who are aware and sensitive of their limits and their abilities, and when they realize they cannot deliver on a promise, they have the integrity to go ask for help as soon as possible. We cannot do much on our own – everyone leans on everyone else to pull through, but when you do not do your part and are afraid to admit it and ask for help, it hurts everyone else, a lot.

The lone inventor is a myth. Thomas Edison had hundreds of people working with him to invent the working lightbulb. He alone could not have tested thousands of materials to come upon the tungsten filament, which finally proved to be the right material. Robotics here is the same. If you promise to hit a deadline, if you promise to have something prototyped, if you promise you can have a certain amount of money raised, if you promise to show up get something done, you should hold to that promise and if you cannot, at least raise your hand early enough and let the community know. We will not berate you for not trying and ask for help. It is when you do not ask for help and wait until little can be done anymore will we ALL fall to the ground.

I have been hurt, a lot, during the last six weeks, by people who claim they can do things, but don’t raise their hand and share with everyone when they have trouble delivering. I’m on my last straw – and I want to make it clear that it is not only the students, but some of us big people who are not pulling our own weight. There are many of you out there who are being proactive and doing more than your part, but there are a few of us in the community who have been given a lot of responsibility but are not or cannot deliver. How many more times do I have to get a slap on the wrist for picking up after you?

I'm crying. This is unfair. I don't know how else to be polite and honest at the same time.

Women, Robots, and Good Things

2006-02-03T12:37:00.000-08:00

Dearest reader,

I hadn't realized that people actually read this blog and pay attention. It has become a fantastic outlet for the things on my mind. More so, I appreciate more than anything the kind words, the food and the emotional support all around. This is not just a technical adventure, but an emotional rollercoaster. And the more times we go through the journey, the better we get a figuring out how to control and manage that emotional rollercoaster.

For me, working with a group of young, strong willed women and being a woman is something really special. I think, I've grown up to keep my emotions in during my struggles in school, and at work. It goes with the thinking that 'if I want to play with the big boys, I can't cry'. More and more, I believe that perhaps this is not the way to approach life, and perhaps I've been doing it so long, that I have to unlearn it. A very wise and insightful woman said to me last night: 'Emily, perhaps it's a good lesson for the girls to see you crack at the surface. It's important for people to be able to share their emotions, to be true to ourselves in the way that we feel, and to feel comfortable sharing that'. You know who you are out there - and I really appreciate you.

I think what makes this team special is that we are all women and that we can work things out in a way that is emotionally supportive and perhaps different from how much of the engineering and science world works. I think we can be much more open and understanding with each other. I did break into tears last Friday - it was a culmination of many things in my work and life - but after that, and after a number of heartfelt conversations with people at work, and with a few of you, I am definitely on the upswing. I believe that having opened myself up to you, our friendships have grown stronger and our ability to work together has grown stronger.

Like work hardened steel, we only become stronger people when we work through our trials and tribulations in robotics, and in life.

They must learn to meet me half way

2006-01-30T00:41:00.000-08:00

Ah the sleepness nights. I'd like to get a few floating thoughts off my mind before attempting to fall asleep once again.

I was watching a show on TV yesterday about four US olympic hopefuls in figure-skating and one of the coaches said "She must meet me halfway." For some reason, this resonated with me deeply and here is why:

US FIRST is like no other competition I know of. In the past three weeks, I have wavered between pleasant optimism and moments of sheer terror. Castilleja students are very very optimistic and entrepreneurial, but they do not know what they do not know. When they set for themselves the goal of building a laucher that they could shoot with through the middle goal and getting the vision camera working for autonomous, I hesitated and I stressed to them how difficult it would be. Frankly, it would take a Stanford graduate student in robotics a few weeks to figure it out (and I know that by experience). But since they rallied for it and believed in it, there was enough momentum that I could and would believe in it too. The case is the same with the trip to Portland.

If I had one wish for Castilleja Robotics, it would be for all the students, parents, teachers and mentors involved to realize that this is NOT a six-week effort. This is a year-round effort. My biggest regret coming into this second year is not pushing myself and pushing the students to spend time during the off season, particularly the fall, preparing for this adventure. I believe in learning by doing, and I believe in just in time learning, but there is JUST TOO MUCH to learn in robotics to do it just in time. Whether that is learning how to build part files in CAD, or program in C, or simply solder components and wires, I would hope that in future years, that the students invest at least some time before the season getting comfortable with these skills.

It is impossible for myself and the mentors to teach these skills *AND* help them solve a very difficult problem in just six weeks. Most college classes in this subject will spend five weeks alone preparing students step by step to build an integrated system - teaching modules in programming, in electronics and in mechanics separately first. Then the last five weeks are devoted to a project. Now try to cram everything into six weeks without any foundation. That's what's happening here at Castilleja.

It is incredibly frustrating for me to have to constantly tell these students what they should do next, especially in less intuitive areas like programming. If we spent more time together during the off season, they would start to be able to anticipate what to do next. For example, I would not have to sit down and show each and every one of them how to solder in order to get a little bit of wiring done, but I would be able to ask them to make headway without having to give them so much direction every single time.

On a similar note, the mentors themselves must spend time doing our homework. While we all have very broad and general knowledge in our respective areas, it is not until we dive into the code and into the kit of parts and understand what the students have been given will we be more effective in our roles. When a student comes to me and says 'My code won't compile', I could probably rattle off many many different reasons that are all wrong and too general to be useful. Without actually getting our heads around what they are given from US FIRST, we cannot effectively help them pinpoint obstacles. Castilleja Robotics has become my second job - I spend half my time at Castilleja with the girls and the other half the time blogging, looking up spec sheets, purchasing items, writing sample code to demonstrate basic principles, and drawing up CAD files for basic test platforms to support the design effort. I have many mentors who come through who want to help give strategic and high level advice, which is fantastic, but without students who have skills to execute on that advice, we will not move forward. I would love to be that kind of mentor too, but right now, the girls do not have the skill set to completely execute this on their own.

There are days when I want to just let them fall hard, but I realize that that might be suicide for an all-girls robotics team. I've had too many female friends drop out of science and engineering because they feel that they can't keep up. More importantly, I do not want this team to fail miserably in front of a male dominate crowd and prove, once again, the stereotype that 'girls can't do science or engineering' to others in the engineering community. This could very well be devasting to the students on the robotics team as it was when I almost failed an electrical engineering class where I was one of two women in a group of sixty.

As we build a foundation for women and technology at Castilleja through robotics, I hope that we can raise the level of commitment from the students to learn year round. It will help them work more effectively during the six-week blitz and it will empower them to make more design decisions. Most importantly, instead of this being 70% me and 30% them, I will be able to meet them half way, and one day, have them lead me.

Apparently I am a . . .

2006-01-27T23:14:00.000-08:00

'Hot nerd' according to Chrissy.

It's been a tough week with 25 days left as of today, but I feel that we are racing towards the finish line a lot quicker now. We finally have most of the parts we need to finish building the six wheel chassis, which is fantastic. Bud spent a few hours this morning machining a great platform to mount all the electronics on so that we don't have to lift up ten separate pieces all connected with wires when we want to move a little bit. Chrissy and Julia are working to connect all the power circuitry and microprocessor elements with proper wiring and lugs. There's now a simple camera platform for us to work off us and things are picking up! I can feel it! We're getting there!

One thing that always impresses me is the dedication of the parents. Tonight, on a Friday night at 8 pm, we had Beth Schnurle (Kersten's mom), Debbie Hara (Julia's mom), and Emily's father with us. Not only did they feed us, they also brought lots of food. We wouldn't be here without them. It's so fantastic!

More later. I have high hopes for Castilleja Robotics as a sustained technology program!

Donut talk

2006-01-24T23:57:00.000-08:00

This is Bud DeLisle. He is a master model maker at IDEO Palo Alto. He brings fantastic donuts and fantastic ideas to the Castilleja Team. He is also very adept at using donuts to explain his ideas. Many more great donuts moments to come!

Mentoring thinkers and leaders

2006-01-18T10:21:00.000-08:00

As much as mentors like myself laugh about having the chance to play with cool toys in the kit of parts, and keep our skills up to par in areas that we might not practice in our professions, mentoring is very much a challenge of passing on knowledge and inspiring young women.

Castilleja robotics is a very special team of bright young women, who have conviction. With the crazy rush of a college prep high school, this is, first and foremost, why I don’t give up when it gets really hard. And trust me - sometimes it gets really hard with this team. It is an incredibly special thing for a teenager to have that much passion and conviction for something other than drugs, sex and rock and roll these days.

Gatorbotics was born out of the thinking the team would be, as much as possible, a student-run team. I entirely support that. I believe in ‘women leading, women learning’. But the difficulty therein comes when the students themselves aren’t aware of what they don’t know. Designing, engineering and building a robot is not as simple as getting together and making brownies. There are a lot of skills required in the process that aren’t part of every day life, that a young woman would not necessarily learn at school or in the household. That’s why we introduce robotics; exactly because the things the students learn in this experience are NOT commonplace. My frustration comes often when students want to make Baked Alaska and they don’t realize that they need a costly deep freezer and a blow torch to do it. And even tougher, because there is such a strong spirit of the team being student-run, the students may not ask for feedback, and I sometimes hesitate to suggest the alternatives or point out the failings, because I do not want to lessen their enthusiasm.

In my short quarter century existence on this earth, I have realized that leaders are good followers as well. I mentor these young women, but I myself have mentors who I check in for advice regularly. Great leaders are capable of doing, but also listening, and seeing the big picture of what is going on. Great leaders are also, more importantly, able to make each and every member of their team feel proud of their contributions – which begins by learning how to delegate, which is, more importantly, preceded by knowing what needs to be done. How to teach this skill I do not know, except by example and with encouragement.

Confucius said: "It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness." It is painstaking to light these candles one by one, but only with loving care and time will it happen. There are no limits and helping these young women break those often self-perceived boundaries is really important to me. When a young woman realizes that she CAN do something and goes beyond what we expect, it is incredibly fulfilling to me. That’s what will make me go back every single time.

A lot of this has been on my mind and now I can go back to work.

Writing from a place where PWM stands better for Pretty Wild Magic,

Emily

Day 4 Highlights

2006-01-10T21:59:00.000-08:00

42 days to go. That's right! We had a fantastic showing of big person supporters today. Doug B came by with a belated Christmas present for the build team - the biggest tool set you ever did see. Chris C came by to do some ass-kicking brainstorm and prototyping which resulted in a scaled down version of a spinning launching device (talk about rapid prototyping and seeing is believing!). Lilly jazzed with the webteam, and finally David B came with a fantabulous dinner. I am amazed. David has fed me well every single time I've been at Castilleja, and I'm there a LOT. Jon and Sara both pitched in on many fronts as well.

I have an uneasiness in my stomach about implementing the vision system but what better than to be challenged? What compounds this really is that we have NO WHERE in the school where we can put a 11 foot center goal. Dang it - why does it have to be so tall and unmanageable this year?

Nevertheless, I am continuously amazed at the support from friends and parents of Gatorbotics. I'm sure we will succeed this year!

Building Field Elements

2006-01-10T08:40:00.000-08:00

Dearest parents, teachers and mentors,

Here is my initial call for help! I am looking for a teacher who can drive a school van, or a parent or mentor who has access to an SUV or truck so that we can go to Home Depot this coming Thursday, January 12 and pick up the materials that we need to build the field elements of the game.

The materials that we need are here:
http://www2.usfirst.org/2006comp/AdvanceBuy_2006_r4.pdf

PLEASE CONTACT ME IF YOU ARE INTERESTED AND ABLE TO HELP! I will pare down the list a bit - there are certainly game elements we can do without so PLEASE DON'T BUY ANYTHING BEFORE YOU LET US KNOW!

We are hoping to start construction at the IDEO Shop (744 High Street, Palo Alto) on Thursday, January 12 from 5- 8 pm and finish at Castilleja on Saturday, January 14.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Emily

ROBOT Magazine on Gatorbotics

2006-01-08T16:11:00.000-08:00

I finally got myself to Borders to purchase a copy of the premier edition of 'Robot Magazine'. A while back, the team had a chance to interview with them and now it's on the shelf! We had a copy of it posted on the door of the science project room, but now you can read it for yourself at leisure! Bravo gatorbotics! (You should be able to click on the image to the right and access a larger scan of the article that you can read.)

Here's a link to Robot Magazine: http://www.botmag.com/

Why I do robotics . . .

2006-01-07T21:59:00.000-08:00

Woodie Flowers summed it up very well for me this morning as to why I mentor robotics at Castilleja . . .

I want you to learn to learn the hard stuff.
I want you to learn how to work in a team.
I want you to learn how to have faith in your creativity.
And I want you to be proud of your work.

You will learn the most when the time is too short, when your budget is too small and when your team is too large. This is what the real world is like.

. . . So it's cheesy, but that's the truth. Gatorbotics, you are a very very special group of people in my heart and you will do what I could not do when I was your age. Being a woman in science and engineering can be really tough. This is why I want you to do everything I can to help you learn that you can succeed.

Emily

Aiming High

2006-01-07T21:29:00.000-08:00

Super Troopers Jon, Sophia, Kersten, and Chrissy were in the science project room today for the 6 *AM* automatic light turn off. That's some serious commitment. So starts the six week FIRST Robotics Competition. We all met up today in San Jose State University for the 7AM kickoff and came back to Castilleja with a huge kit of parts (KOP) worth well over $10,000 given to each team. FIRST is amazing for what it is able to put together for high school students - enough to make engineers like myself droool.

This year's challenge is 'AIM HIGH'. Apparently the clue about the 'shovel's show' is a reference to David Spade's appearance in "Just Shoot Me". A very interesting complex challenge involving a finite number of foam balls, six robots on a field and scoring through a hoop. There are four periods: autonomous, defense, offense, then open. I'm not even going to try to explain the scoring details.

For a short 3 minute animation of what the game entails, go here: http://robotics.nasa.gov/events/first/AimHigh-Sml.mov

For more details on the robot requirements, game and arena details, go here:
http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/2006/frcdocs.htm

Some highlights of the day:

* When Jim Beck (FIRST Regional Director) pointed Gatorbotics out in the premier edition of Robot magazine at the kickoff.

* When we learned that pushing the cart quickly can result in a kit of parts in a puddle.

* When we learned from team 115 that the KOP provide us with a structural member with an offset center hole already in place for a six-wheel robot configuration.

* When Sophia kicked off the season in the Chorale Room to 30 students, parents and mentors. Oh the excitement. So much brainstorming and ideas that needed to be unleashed!!

* When we did our inventory on the KOP and found all sorts of wonderful sensors and actuators and goodies.

* When we finally left Castilleja at 4:00 pm, after a very long day for a few of us!

Kudos to the the subleads, the lifeblood of the team, for getting to Castilleja in the morning to all come together and for a very successful afternoon kickoff and brainstorm. As well, thank you to all the parents and teachers for supporting this effort. We cannot do this without you.

Egg Hatching

2006-01-06T22:24:00.000-08:00

With the many emails I send to the Gatorbotics circle of friends, a blog was inevitable. Perhaps, I've even been a bit of a laggard! We've been gearing up for months now to the kickoff which is eight hours away - and with that, I am an insomniac and will count robots jumping over fences as I fall asleep tonight.

www.usfirst.org has posted this:

five 'bots tangling with pasta
a game piece obsessed with a shovel's show
and seeing Montana's green heights

See you all tomorrow in San Jose for the Silicon Valley FRC kickoff!