Bangor Daily News feature on Maine Robotics

Robin Wood did a nice article on Maine Robotics this last Friday.  Thought you’d like a chance to see it.

Here are the results from the April 28th Maine Robotics Track Meet held at the Sea Road School in Kennebunk. 

Stay tuned for the upcoming Track Meets at the Ellsworth Elementary/Middle School. 

Maine Robotics is trying cable TV for our summer advertising this year. If you want to check out the 30 second spot, you can see it here. Robotics Summer camps 2012 

You can now see a short video I’ve posted on YouTube that talks about the Steeplechase event. Take a few minutes so you can see what the structure looks like and make sure the one you’ve built looks like the official one.
Steeplechase Description 

Never a dull moment…

1. A robot ceases to be on the course when the official determines that it is no longer able to recover to the course.  This will be determined if any of the following happen:
1. The robot leaves the course completely (usually falling off)
2. The robot partially leaves the course and cannot get back on (hangs on the edge)
3. The robot becomes stuck at a transition point (the pit or the peak usually)
2. As with all of the events, timing is started when the robot crosses the start line and is completed when it crosses the finish line.
1. If a robot fails to complete the course, the time will be the time at which the official determines that any of the conditions under #1 above are true.  The team may “throw in the towel” if the robot is hung up and ask the official to stop the timer, but that would also end the trial.  There is no limit on when the team may “call” the end of the trial.
3. NOTE: I previously stated, by error, that we had failed to specify a 1 foot maximum length, but we had… so no robots over 12” in length.  Sorry for any confusion.

Dear coaches and interested Robot Track Meeters…

The track meets are fast approaching, with Kennebunk less than 3 weeks away.  The number of teams and the number of team members have already surpassed the last few years and we expect them to keep going up.  If you know of teams that haven’t registered, let them know they need to get it in!

A few housekeeping notes about the Steeplechase:

• The steeplechase directions for building the board are off.  The actual building directions are correct, but the diagram for cutting the pieces has one of the pieces listed as 12”x26” Landing Bottom, when it should read 12”x24” Landing Bottomsorry for any confusion.
• The directions for the steeplechase don’t specify the transition from the floor onto the ramp.  There will be a section of the foam liner taped down onto the floor with a flap of foam liner from the ramp that overlaps onto the floor piece.  The black line extends over both.
• The dimensions of the start of the Steeplechase are not specified (sorry).  But the “start line” will be 6” from the base of the ramp and the robot must start completely behind this and time will start when it passes the line.  Next year there WILL be a back line 12” away, but we didn’t specify so it won’t be applied this year.  Therefore longer robots will not be disqualified.
• Both the start line and the stop line are sharpies drawn on the foam liner, they are NOT electrical tape.
• The transition from the ramp to the pit are not clear (there are three different possible interpretations to this, again sorry).  The ramp will end at the inner edge of the pit.  There is NO “landing” of any kind at the edge of the ramp and there is at least an additional 1/4” drop off the edge of the ramp into the pit due to the thickness of the wood used to make the ramp.
• We have COOL new ribbons this year for the GOLD STANDARD winners, rather than the paper certificates we’ve used the past two years.  Coaches should work with their team members to make sure all of the responsible children (and only the responsible children) are listed for a particular robot and event.  Gold Standard ribbons are given to all of the members associated with a particular robot that succeeds at a particular event (or bridge or speed build)

The Steeplechase is a new event this year and obviously we miss little details.  Thanks to all those who find them and are patient in pointing them out.  Remember we try to err on the side of ingenuity rather than rule picking.

Q: I was wondering if you knew the event layout in order for the track meet this year?  The reason I ask is my team was considering entering into several events but we only have 1 kit and needed to know if we had enough time to disassemble after 1 event and build for the next?

A: Well of course you can always enter the bridge and speed build without impacting your robot, we put those in there for that very reason.  In general (hey we have technical difficulties as well) we start events as follows:

The first three take the longest and are started one after the other (once one is STARTED, we start the next) so all three of these will be running concurrently.

• Slope Climber (takes a while)
• Strongest (also takes a while
• Fastest (takes a while because of so many entrants)

As the above are finished we start up the middle three, but since we don’t know what order they will finish it is hard to predict at what order they get going.  A lot depends on the number of entrants in each event.  If we only have 5 in the slope competition it might not be bad, but if we have 12 then it will take a lot longer, that kind of thing.

These three tend to be very quick and if you were in two of them, you would ask the official at one to go first and go last at the other.  Normally the teams all go once, then go a second time, then go a third time to get their highest score (in case of mishaps, breakages, bad batteries, etc).  But if you need to be in two places we can let you go once, twice, three times and then head off to the next event, as long as you understand you might end up with a problem three times in a row without time to fix.  We’ll be as open as possible.

• Table Clearing
• Delivery Mission
• Steeplechase

The last three are done after everything else is done and they are done one at a time, so no overlap with the first 6 events.

• Speed Build
• Ping Pong Shot Put
• Bridge

If there is ANY chance of purchasing a couple of extra motors so you won’t need to rebuild the robot, only swap the NXT that would save you a LOT of time between events.  Motors direct from LEGOeducation.us are $19.95 each, so for $40 plus shipping you could take care of that problem. And while extra wires would be good too, those are easy to swap when you swap the NXT.

And check eBay and bricklink.com for motors as well.  Although I’ve seldom found electronic components on Bricklink for less than the new price, so buyer beware.  But a great place for most everything else.  I saw one seller from the Czech Republic selling 15 used motors for as low as $14 each.  (Czechoslovakia is one of LEGOs main manufacturing countries) but not sure of shipping cost or time for shipping… food for thought.

The 2012 Maine Robotics Track Meet season is well underway, although certainly not too late to form up a team and come to one of the events.  Based on some questions I’ve had recently I just wanted to put out one reminder and one request.

1.  Reminder: The early registration deadline ($35/student) is Friday April 6th (check, PO or online registration).  If it isn’t postmarked or paid by 4/6/2012 the cost will be $40/student.  So get those registrations in now.  Please don’t ask on the 7th or 8th for an exception, thanks.

2.  If you are collecting a bunch of checks from students for the track meet, please have them made out to your local group and then have them write one single check for everyone.  Sorry, but with some teams having 10-30 students on them, we simply don’t have the administrative power to handle a couple of hundred checks coming in.  Much easier for each group to do locally.

Keep those great questions coming in, Tom

I’ve had a couple of questions about the foam surface for the steeplechase.  When I first put this together there was only one form of DUCT Easy Shelf Liner.  Now there are two available, they are:

DUCT EasyLiner Select Grip and
DUCT EasyLiner Smooth Top

Maybe they were both available before, but the one I’ve got on ours is smooth on both sides.  So here is what I’m proposing:

I am going to recover the set I have with the SMOOTH TOP liner and with the smooth side glued down and the bumpier side up (for better traction and easier gluing).  The SELECT GRIP would not work as well if anyone is trying to use light sensors, so I’m going to stay away from that one; it has holes that would potentially give problems with the readings.

So use the SMOOTH TOP with the smooth side down and the rough side showing.

Sorry for any inconvenience, I’m going to put this one in the “outside of my control” category.  The original roll that I had purchased from the store had the same surface on both sides, so when I received a couple of questions this week about this I had to figure out why you all were asking about the different sides.  

If anyone thinks this is going to be a major problem for them, let me know and perhaps we’ll run an A and a B course with the different coverings, but I’m hoping not.

Tom

Maine Robotics is holding a teacher/parent/coach robotics workshop at the Houlton South Side School on Friday March 16th.  Workshop runs from 8:30 to 2:30 and participants should bring a lunch.

We still have space in this workshop and you can RSVP by email to info@mainerobotics.orgor call 866-4340.  Cost to attend is $35 and participants should bring either a check or purchase order in order to attend.  Maine Robotics supplies all of the equipment for the workshop and attendees will go home with three different easy to build robot instruction books (Simple NXT robot, Treaded NXT Robot, and ATV NXT Robot).