Saturday, January 26, 2013

Starting Off

This year, teams #3381, #3418, and #4531 came together at Kohler Engines for the FIRST season Kick Off. The day begins with the teams watching the live broad cast for this year’s game challenge, Ultimate Ascent. The game begins as robots pick-up and throw frisbees into various targets at different heights located on either edge of the playing field; as well as on top of two pyramids. For harder targets, such as a pyramid or a 1 point box, more points are awarded. At the end of the match, robots can earn bonus points by climbing the pyramids with a goal in mind to reach one of the three set climbing heights. More points are awarded for higher levels of climbing. As for every year, teams competing have a minimum of six weeks to complete a fully functioning robot. The game will begin with a brief 15 second autonomous period. Human drivers are only allowed to take control of the robot after the autonomous period. During qualification rounds, FIRST teams are randomly assigned into an alliance of three teams to compete. The points earned in these matches will affect the teams' qualification seeding position; eight highest  ranking seeds choose their own alliances to compete in the elimination rounds.


Monday, April 16, 2012

Final Update!

Well, it is about time to publish this last update regarding the Droid Rage Robotics Team 3381. It has been an awesome season--we worked hard, learned a lot, made a lot of great friends and had a ton of fun!

Here are the videos that everyone has been asking for. Our deepest apologies for not posting these sooner--but if you have ever uploaded a video to YouTube, you know it takes FOREVER to get these things to work. I think that we have pulled together some nice footage and you can get an idea of what it is like at competition for us. But nothing can ever compare because the competitions are a BLAST!!!

Ok, so here we go. This first video shows an entire 2-minute match and what it looks like. Notice the red team (alliance) is on one side and the blue team is on the other. During the first 15 seconds, the robots are in Autonomous Mode where the robot runs its own program and shoots to score. The remainder of the match is Tele-Op Mode, where the robot is run by both a driver and a shooter (people). That is where our joysticks come in handy! Anyway, here is the video, watch for our robot on the Red Team (3381):


This video shows a balancing mishap! We are trying to get 2 robots on the bridge for 20 points and somehow, it doesn't go as planned:


Although our robot is not in this next match, keep an eye on the middle platform where a red and a blue robot are trying to balance. The blue robot was built with a wooden track and no matter how hard he tries, he just cannot get up on the platform to balance with that wooden track......and a guest appearance by Darth Vader:



Not everything was smooth sailing. We did have our fair share of technical difficulties, as evidenced by the following video:


Last, but not least, an encore appearance from our famous mascots:


Here is a picture of our entire team, with representatives from about 6 different high schools. We had a great team with a lot of personalities that clicked. We are sure looking forward to next year:



Once again, THANK YOU to our supporters and sponsors!! We could not do this with your help!!! This is such a great opportunity for us and we are so very grateful :)

~Mason and Cassidy

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Competition Time!

Hi Everyone~

It's about time we give you an update! We have been busy at competitions with our robot!

For starters, here is a picture of our completed robot:


You can see the modified ball chute and the conveyor taking the basketball up to shooting position. We also had originally protected our robot with plexiglass all the way around, but due to weight restrictions, we had to go with netting instead. Bummer.

First, we arrive in Duluth, MN at 11:45pm on Wednesday, March 7th. We checked into our hotel and crashed for the night! Getting up at 6am, we eagerly ate breakfast and got to unloading our robot (AKA Admiral Akbar) and gear. Thursday was an all-practice day, Friday was actual competitions and Saturday was finals.

Here are some pictures from the Duluth competition:
Here you can see the layout of the playing field:

And the three platforms in the middle that, if we can manage to balance our robot on, we get extra points during a match:

And here is our team in red, standing behind the plexiglass to control the robot with joysticks:

During our practice time, we were having technical difficulties when we could not the robot to communicate with our laptop and a couple of the judges came out to assist us. This would only happen on a practice day--they are not allowed to help us once the competition starts!

Uriah lines up the robot for a perfect shot:

And here is a pic of the entire field during a competition:

And let's not forget our mascots: The Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots! Everybody loves our mascots and lots of people asked to pose with our guys:


Here, they are kicking the snot out of an uncooperative team member (Adam):
(just kidding)



And here our Rock 'Em Sock 'Em mascots duke it out:



Overall, Duluth proved to be a very challenging competition for us. With many technical difficulties such as communication problems, bad drive motors and wheels not gripping, we struggled but learned a lot. After a lot of heated arguments and some productive brainstorming, we managed to place 59th out of 64 teams.

Fortunately, the Milwaukee competition went much better! Stay tuned!

~Mason and Cassidy




Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Hard work pays off!

Hello Everyone~

Well, we have had to make some changes to the robot. Arrow, one of our mentors, always says 'Break it early, break it often.' What he means is that for us to see where our robot is weak, break it early enough so that we still have time to re-design it, and test it again to see whether or not it will work like it should!!

So....with that in mind, our first re-design is with our ball chute. Remember the blue duct-taped chute? Well, you can forget about it. It was flexing too much and didn't allow us to shoot our basketball accurately all the time.
Here's the new prototype:


You can see that the chute is more rigid, so hopefully it will allow us to shoot more accurately to gain more points during the competitions.

Here's some other pics of our team working diligently:

Olivia soldering to her heart's content, wiring up the main controller of the robot:




Here's our battery compartment. Our robot runs completely on batteries, so batteries are important!! Notice how we'll use this for both battery storage and battery charging:



Our biggest challenge so far has been getting the ball off the ground and up into the shooter! We started off with a 'scoop' idea, but that didn't fly. Our team finally decided on a conveyor system that will literally deliver the ball up to the shooting system:


You can see the brown track of the conveyor off to the right side of this picture:


Here's proof that someone other than Mason actually works on this robot:



Wow....all our hard work finally comes together. This thing might actually work:



Still have more work to do! Stay tuned!
Thanks for all your support, everyone!

~Mason and Cassidy

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Still brainstorming....

Hi Everybody~

Well, we have been working on making a chute that the ball travels up and then gets thrown out with enough force to make a basket. We have had a couple of different prototypes, but this one seems like it is going to work the best:



As you can see, the rubber-coated wheels help to propel the basketball up and out of the chute.

Here, Mason and Mr. Tracy Bartels take a moment to think about their next plan of action (actually, Mason is wondering what time lunch is):


And, of course, our CAD team is hard at work drawing up the latest dimensions and modifications to our robot:


We just want to say "thanks" again to everybody! We were able to raise enough money for both Mason and Cassidy to attend both competitions in Duluth and Milwaukee. We are so excited and cannot wait to go!!!!

Stay tuned....we still have more pictures to show you!!!

~ Mason and Cassidy

Monday, February 6, 2012

Making progress...

We have been working hard, putting in lots of hours just building the basic design and getting the robot to move! Currently, we are using 2 joysticks to control the robot, which works pretty good. You can see our progress here:

We have all split up into different teams: mechanical, electrical, CAD, communications and marketing. Lots of cooperation is required to get our robot built, programmed and financed.

Here's some more pictures of our team working together:




Here is what our robot sees!


We also just want to send out a BIG "Thank You" to everybody who has contributed their hard-earned money to help us get to the competitions!! We are so grateful!! Thank you SO MUCH!!!!

~Cassidy and Mason


Sunday, January 22, 2012


Hi Again~

Here’s another way to help our team out. We are selling light bulbs that use LED’s. If you are not familiar with LED’s, it stands for Light-Emitting Diode. This is the latest and greatest energy-saving way to light your home!

Right now, many families have CFL’s (compact fluorescent light bulbs), but they contain mercury and have to be disposed of in a responsible way. If one breaks in your house, you are subject to harmful mercury vapors!

Not so with the LED bulbs. These bulbs are simply amazing, both for the amount of light they give off and for the super-efficient way they run: just $1.02 per year for the 40 Watt bulb and $1.63 per year at for the 60 Watt bulb3 hours of usage per day. That’s amazing!!! And NO MERCURY!!!

They also better able to withstand vibration and are well-suited to use in trouble lights, ceiling fans and garage door openers.

If you’d like to know more about these light bulbs or would like to place an order, here is additional information:

Replaces standard incandescent 40 Watt Bulb
Replaces standard incandescent 60 Watt Bulb
Uses just $1.02 per year (when used 3 hours per day)
Uses just $1.63 per year (when used 3 hours per day)



Life expectency: 25 years (when used 3 hours per day)
5 Year Warranty Period
Dimmable to 5% Output
Environmentally Safe Disposal (unlike Flourescent)
Omnidirectional Warm White Light Output



Cost: $15 for qty of 1-5 Bulbs
$12 for qty 6+ bulbs
Cost: $25 for qty of 1-5 Bulbs
$22 for qty of 6+ Bulbs

Email us at orders.droidrage.com for more information or to place an order.
We want to say “thanks” again for continuing to support us and our Droid Rage Robotics Team!
                             ~Mason and Cassidy