Sorry for the lack of posts since build season has ended, but we have been up to quite a bit. Starting with the last day of build season, Kitt, our project coordinator, and I went to a dinner with Dean Kamen. With representatives from Saguaro and Arcadia also in attendance, it was a night to remember. While we were at this dinner, the rest of the team was back at the room were preparing and finally bagging the robot. Since then, we have met to debrief on the build season and decide what needed to be worked on from now until our first competition, which is Arizona’s regional, coming up on March 22-24. Currently, our to do list includes pit planning, new scouting system, additional work with the robot components that we held back, and final revisions to vision and robot code.
That about sums up our post-season plans. We will update if there is anymore breaking news. See you at the Arizona Regional!

Hey everyone! We are working away on trying to get our robot done in order to attend Duel in the Desert tomorrow. Our robot has been affected by some unforeseen problems so we are attempting on addressing these problems before tomorrow. Programming is working away on the robot’s code and integrating the vision system with that code. Website Team in happily working on less time sensitive projects, such as the Chairman’s Award video. Hopefully we will be able to attend tomorrow, but no matter what the future may bring us, you all have a good one!

As we are approaching our final week of build season, everyone is hard at work finishing up all aspects of the robot and website by their respective deadlines. Mechanical is hard at work tying up all of the loose ends of the robot. Programming is busy working on Kinect and Axis camera code and getting our new mini-Crio operational. As far as the website, I just finished up writing the rest of the content, so all that’s left is adding a few more features and general clean-up. It is looking really awesome and I can’t wait until we release it next week. We should be posting videos and photos of the robot in the coming days, so stay tuned!

Apologies for the week long hiatus but all teams have been hard at work on their respective projects. The website development team has been very hard at work on the new website redesign, which should be live by this Sunday. On the programming front, work on the kinect is wrapping up and should be ready to go next week. We have also been messing around with our axis camera, which, if it stays on track, should be ready to be used by Sunday if the kinect is not operational. Mechanical team is diligently working on finalizing all aspects on the robot.

After The explosive success of getting our kinect working yesterday, we now have it successfully locating one of the reflective tape squares on the backboard. They are now working on the code to enable it to locate multiple targets at the same time. Mechanical team is mounting on our launcher as well as further developing our feeding mechanism. They are also improving our robot’s chassis and working on improving our bridge so it more closely resembles the one in the competition. Lastly, website team is adding innovative enhancements to the HTML 5 website. As a vivid air of triumph echos through the room in the after effects of the programming team’s successful efforts, I will bid farewell.

In current news the Programming Team is working away on the Microsoft Kinect code and experimenting with the axis camera under the direction of our assistant head programmer. Mechanical Team has built an angle adjuster for the shooter as well as mounted part of the feeding system.They also did extensive testing on the launching mechanism. The Website Team is continuing their hard work on the new website. That’s all folks!

Today everyone is hard at work as always. Programming team is working on debugging the Microsoft Kinect code as well as teaching the first year members some more advanced Labview coding techniques. Mechanical team is hard at work doing a part decomposition, which means they are reviewing what works and what doesn’t work and fixing the things that don’t work. The Website team is continuing on the development of the new website. Stay Classy!

Programming managed to get the demo bot running and have been continuously working on the Kinect code. They also updated the cRio firmware to 2012′s image. The mechanical team worked on refining the feeder mechanism and continued to work on the launching mechanism. Our Website team drafted out the new website layout as well as created specific roles for each member of the website development team. The new site should be up by Thursday, February 16, 2012.