PHOENIX REGIONAL REPORT
THE 2004 FIRST PHOENIX REGIONAL COMPETITION
THINGS EVERY STUDENT SHOULD KNOW:
The best time for friends, family to attend the Southern California FIRST Competetion:
Thursday, March 25 (practice day, not much to see)
Friday, March 26 10-4
Saturday, March 27 10-5
There is a Huge Inspection Check List on the FIRST Documentation Web Page. The Robot must be inspected by Judges prior to competition for size, weight and show a complete parts list including the prices of any thing not in the kit. This does not include nuts and bolts. But does include gears, gearboxes, etc. For any purchased or donated parts, look up the prices on Grinnel, McMaster on their web sites.
Each and every team member MUST READ the section of the on-line manual on Robot Rules, and the section of the manual on Game Rules. Plus the updates. Revision C is current, there have been 14 updates of the manual in the last 6 weeks. More might follow.
LOOK FOR THIS INFORMATION AT:
http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/doc_updt.htm
Section 4 - The Game
Rev- C Marked Up Version (pdf - 196 KB) 3-3-04
Rev- C Incorporated (pdf - 194 KB) 3-3-04
Section 5 - The Robot
Rev- C Marked Up Version (pdf - 282 KB) 3-3-04
Rev- C Incorporated (pdf - 250 KB) 3-3-04
Section 5 - The Robot: Important Documents
2004 Robot Inspection Checklist Rev 3-9-04 (pdf - 56 KB) 3-9-04
WE MIGHT WANT TO CONSIDER ATTENDING THE SATURDAY SESSION AT:
Sacramento Regional
California Expo & Fairgrounds
Sacramento, CA USA
Dates: Mar 18-20, 2004
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At the FIRST competition, there are a number of awards which are awarded independently of the robotic contests.
These other awards, such as the Spirit Award are given out by the judges. These are for categories including Art Design, Computer Assisted Design and Animation. (A copy of 3-D Studio Max is included with each kit.)
Therefore it is important that each student have an understanding of the highlights of the teams robot and program.
When a student sees a judge walking around the arena or pit area, the student first asks the judge if it's OK to talk to him. Then, if the Judge is busy, the student lets him go. If the judge has a minute, then the student gives the judge a spiel about the highlights of our program and how our robot works.
At least one student must be in the Pit Area at AT ALL TIMES to be available to talk to the judges and to talk about the program. If this is difficult, put a T-Shirt on somebody's girlfriend or kid sister and have her sit in the pit area to answer the Judges' questions.
The serious California teams come to compete in the Arizona Regionals to finish their robots and to get a headstart on the competition. Beach Cities Robotics Team 294 finished dead last in the Arizona Regionals in 2003, but due to the experience and extra work on their robot, they finished second in the Los Angeles Regionals two weeks later.
Shipping Box
Some of the shipping boxes are designed to be emptied and tipped on their sides to provide an additional workspace with side rails to restrain the robot. Others open up to reveal a sophisticated interior of tool shelves and parts storage. Many are colorfully painted with the team colors to earn points in the presentation and team spirit awards.
The Pit Area
Each team is given a numbered space and a table. Each team MUST HAVE at least one student in the pit area at all times to answer questions from the judges and anyone who stops by (as well as to keep an eye on the team's tools and gear.
Some teams have elaborate modular fiberglass shelf units that enclose their pit areas with a booth formed by 3 walls with as many as 8 tool shelves on each, plus a workbench. Others have machine tools, drill press, etc., which sit on shelves attached to the side of their shipping boxes.
Pit Area Presentation
Most teams have a large canvas poster displaying the team name, location, number and sponsors' logos at the rear of their pit area.
Pit decoration and etiquette are a big part of scoring points for the judges in the various award categories. One team (The Gila Monsters) had a yellow and black nine foot long Gila Monster puppet on top of their booth (made of white PVC tubes). Four or five guys would lift the articulated Gila Monster puppet over their heads on three foot poles and carry it out into the arena for the matches.
T- Shirts
The adults and kids on each team are identified by colorful T-Shirts. The T-Shirts typically display the team name & location, team number, team symbol, and a list of their major sponsors. Some teams have separate T-Shirts for the team members to wear on each day of the event (the Pit Area can be vary hot & sweaty). Other teams bring along spare T- Shirts to swap with other teams, or to reward helpful Judges or benefactors from other schools. Most of the T-Shirts are four color designs. The colors a team uses are not necessarily their school's colors. Some teams wear different colored shirt designs on each day of the competition.
These T-Shirts can take many forms. Some have the nicknames of each individual team members printed across the back of the shirt. I also saw matching bowling shirts, golf shirts, baseball shirts, Hawaiian shirts, mesh football jerseys, and bicycle racing jerseys. At least two teams wore one-piece jump suits with patches and custom embroidery.
In Practice Rounds -- Free Throw Shooting
If a team's robot is not ready, the team's human members go to the arena for the match and shoot free throws at the goals. Ten to twelve balls in each goal is not unusual. In competition, if a robot is not ready, a six minute time out may be called; but if the robot is still not ready at the end of that period, the robot's alliance partner will compete solo against the other two teams.
Some of these teams have designated shooters who just don't miss sinking the ball in the target. (King Drew Magnet, from South Central L.A., had a girl shooter who seemed to sink every shot.)
Scouting The Opposition
An important part of the competition is scouting the opposition. One team was given a major award based on the completeness of their extensive computer database of each of their opponents' robots, their style of play, analysis of their respective strategies, strengths, and weaknesses. This is helpful in gaming a strategy to use their opponents strengths against them.
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An Extremely Clever Design
Team 190 had a pyramid shaped robot that could do all the normal stuff, but excelled at going to the center of the chin-up bar, hooking on and lifting itself up to the bar. Once in place, it extended a pair of Plexiglas wings (like solar panels on a spacecraft) over the top of the bar to prevent other robots from hooking on to the chin-up bar. When it was hanging in this position, it would sometimes extend its hook toward the top of the other team's goal to prevent the other robots from placing a doubler ball on top of their goal. In the finals, this robot left the starting line, climbed to the center of the platform, and hooked on to the chin-up bar in Autonomous Mode.
Swerve Drive
Team 1011 had an innovative Swerve Drive system for their drive train. It featured four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering. This team had built a plywood prototype and, after testing, a metal competition model. The drive train on their prototype was available for inspection in their pit area.
Simple Also Works
Team 838 had a Cigar Box With Attitude, a rectangular box that had no hook, no appendages of any kind. It could only herd balls back to the human players, try to knock over other robots, or go up on the chin-up platform and try to prevent any other robot from getting into position to hook onto the bar. They scored below Team 294 in the preliminary round, yet they were picked (and Team 294 was not) to compete in the finals because of their tenacity and aggressiveness.
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Some of The Awards
Daimler-Chrysler Team Spirit Award - for all the little things, interaction with Judges, T-shirts, handouts, freebies, co-operating with other teams, mentoring, etc.
Imagery Award - for the team's visual presentation, T-shirts, caps, Pit Area decorations, etc.
Leadership and Control Award - for the control system design which tracks the path in two dimensions.
Xerox Creativity Award - for creativity in approach to tasks like Grabbing The Ball and Hanging From The Bar.
Website Award
Autodesk Animation Award - for 3D animation
Delphi Driving Technology Award - based on an example of description and execution of an example of engineering excellence
General Motors Design Award
Motorola Award - for robustness of robot design
VIDEO - FIRST FRENZY RAISING THE BAR - discusses the objectives and rules of this year's competition, available from http://robotics.nasa.gov/archive/video.htm
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Contact List:
NASA JPL Chad Fishbauer &
Christine Schneider e-mail vvrobotics@yahoo.com
A key contact : Edmund Potocky e-mail potocki@excite.com
Caltech Robotics Outreach GroupAnn Marie Polsenberg e-mail ampolsen@caltech.edu
For sponsoring information contact Carol Popovitch 480-792-7938
NASA has grants for new teams starting out and veteran teams.
Contact the NASA Educational Department for a $10,000 Super Grant.
Each NASA facility had additional educational grants available.
Last year 138 teams sponsored by NASA, this year 145 teams.
A typical three year grant program from NASA:
Year One $7K
Year Two $12K
Year Three $16K
Kingman Arizona HS Robotics Team has their Marketing Handbook (a step by step guide to fundraising) available as a PDF download in the white pages on line at chiefdelphi.com. This is an error-proof fundraising system. Others are also on the chiefdelphi white pages. For example, Beach Cities Robotics also has a link to their fund raising letter on this website.
Also see firstlegoleague.org and arizonafll.org for information on FIRST LEGO LEAGUE ROBOTICS.
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SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS:
NASA & Individual NASA sites
Walt Disney Imaginering
Rolls Royce
Ford
General Motors
Intel
Toyota
Honeywell
Northrop Grumman
AMD
Raytheon
ITT
IBM
PIZZA HUT
DEL TACO
KIWANIS
ROTARY CLUB
TARGET
MICROCHIP
Posted by cubrobot
at 8:36 AM PST
