Delmarva Robotics

These robots have a cool stinger on the back of the robot to capture another playing piece.

Lots and lots of driver skill going on there!

The results and awards for the 2019 CR Robotics Roundup

• Tournament Champions – 8890B IronRAMS B John Dickinson High School
• Tournament Champions – 8890A IronRAMS A John Dickinson High School
• Tournament Finalist – 3348A Indians Indian River High School
• Tournament Finalist – 3348B Indians Indian River High School
• Judges Award – 3348C Indians Indian River High School

16 Teams attended

High School Results

• Excellence Award – 3389C TEC-Tigers Wicomico County Robotics Club
• Tournament Champions – 3389E Tec-Tigers Wicomico County Robotics Club
• Tournament Champions – 3389C TEC-Tigers Wicomico County Robotics Club
• Tournament Finalist – 28724X West Nottingham Academy Maroon
• Tournament Finalist – 8890A IronRAMS A John Dickinson High School
• Design Award – 3389A TEC-Tigers Wicomico County Robotics Club
• Judges Award – 8890A IronRAMS A John Dickinson High School
• Robot Skills Champion – 28724X West Nottingham Academy Maroon

Middle School Results

• Excellence Award – 90967F Springer F – Mickey Bean Springer Middle School
• Tournament Champions – 8890C IronRAMS C John Dickinson Middle School
• Tournament Champions – 90967F Springer F – Mickey Bean Springer Middle School
• Tournament Finalist – 90967D Springer D – French Fries Springer Middle School
• Tournament Finalist – 90967C Springer C – Zebra Springer Middle School
• Design Award – 90967A Springer A – Crikey Springer Middle School
• Judges Award – 4333B Gänger P.S. duPont Middle School
• Robot Skills Champion – 90967C Springer C – Zebra Springer Middle School

We are all pretty excited about our robots and how many points they can score.

Here is a video of a robot doing 22 points (stacking both yellow bonus hubs and a high hang).

Something to think about and work on as we enter the last month of competition!

22 Point Next Level video

Mt Pleasant Elementary was host of the largest event this season with 22 teams in attendance.

Roboteers have a few events of experience so there were more high scores and some new modifications that are starting to appear.

Overall averages were up this week. Today’s high score was 18, with hangs and scoring both bonus hubs stacked! At the end of the qualifications the standings were:

Ranking	Team Name	Average Score
1	Lombardy Google	13
2	Claymont Boeing	12.67
3	Lombardy Tesla	11.89
4	Maple Lane Rocky	11.0
5	Hanby Beetles	10.89

In the finals the 9th alliance of Claymont Lenovo and Pixar surprised the crowd with their 14 point showing. (Their prior averages were 7 and 8 points). Their lead held for 4 more finals when the third alliance of Hanby Beetles and Claymont Tesla tied them. In the tie breaker Tesla and the Beetles had three more points.

The Tournament Winners were Claymont Boeing and Lombardy Google with a high of 19.

Second place teams were Hanby Beetles and Claymont Tesla.

On the judged award side, the Claymont Lenovo robot took the design award with their fork with gears supporting the inside edge. They were able to make some last minute parks with the setup. They are also working on a motor driven hook that shows promise.

The build award went to the Hanby Hornets for their combo H drive and four bar linkage. The judges chose Maple Lane Shadow Knights for their unique scoop along the front.

Thanks to Mary Flowers and Jackie Chesworth our lead mentors and the staff of Mt Pleasant Elementary for pulling off such a great event. Thanks to the five parents that pitched in to be score keepers. And to Michell Kutch and Jason Heller for being our announcer and making sure the event ran smoothly.

Thanks to Steve and Foster from STEM Robotics keeping all the electronics and scoring running smoothly. And a special thanks to all the teams that brought fields to the event.

Our next IQ events are the first weekend in March with 1 March being the Claymont Friday night event and 2 March at Georgetown Elementary.

The Rt 9 Library and Innovation Center was the venue for their annual event “Innobots”. This years event almost doubled in size with 14 teams in attendance. We ran two fields in the Blackbox theater so each team got a chance to play with all the other teams.

About a third of the teams had been to prior events, Saturday was the debut of all the Lancashire teams, Team Orion, Prometheus and our host robots from Rt 9 Library, Savage and Newton.

Today’s high score was 18, with hangs and scoring both bonus hubs stacked! At the end of the qualifications the standings were:

Ranking	Team Name	Average Score
1	Claymont Boeing	10.56
2	Claymont Tesla	9.11
3	Hanby Beetles	8.44
4	Team Orion	7.67
5	Hanby Hornets	7.67
6	Lancashire Gazels	7.56

The 7 finals runs went very fast. The second seed of Hanby Hornets and the Lancashire Gazelles showcased the Hornets ability to high hang to score a 12., The Claymont duo of Tesla and Boeing in the last finals racked up a 12 to TIE! A tie breaker had Gazelles / Hornets scoring 10 for a total of 22. Tesla and Boeing came back with a strong 12 to take the event with 24 points.

Team Orion took the build award with the unique drive base and arm, the robot can push two and carry one hub at a time. The judges award went to Rt 9 Savage for their simplistic arm and scoop. The extended arm and pointer was able to flip both bonus hubs off in most matches.

Thanks to Pam Stevens for running the event!

Our Referees: Jessi Glassco & Shuntea Langley

Staff support from: Yumarys Polanco-Miller, Albert Grant, Robin Kondzielawa and Shante Watson

Thanks to STEM Robotics: Steve and Foster for producing the event.

See you at the next event on Saturday 9 February at Mt Pleasant Elementary School from 8:30 until 3 PM

On Friday 25 January 22 robot teams from six schools gathered at the Forwood Elementary School Cafeteria. We set up four fields for this event to give each team 9 matches of play.

Teams played 99 qualification matches and ate over 18 pizzas.

The Forwood Sharks were on top of the heap, followed closely by the Carrcroft Slithering Snakes at. Maple Lane’s Shadow Knights continued from last week’s event showing off their hanging skills. In the table below you can see how close the top 6 teams were.

Ranking	Team Name	Average Score
1	Forwood Sharks	10.14
2	Carrcroft Slitherig Snakes	9.86
3	Maple Lane Shadow Knights	9.71
4	Lombardy Telsa	9.43
5	Hanby Beetle	9.0
6	Lombardy Google	9.0

After the finals run it was the Lombardy Mac and Lombardy Amazon teams coming from way behind as the 9th and 10th ranked teams taking the event with a 12 point score!

Second place went to the Hanby Beetles and Lombardy Google with a score of 9.

The build award went to the Hanby Hornets for their amazing design with the four bar linkage.

Judges award was to the Carrcroft Slithering Snakes for their very interesting design that let them quickly knock the Bonus Hubs off

For their first outing the Lonbardy teams had a great day with all four teams placing in the top 10. The Harlan Ravens made a great showing at 12th place. They had finished their robot a week ago and came in to the event with just a few minutes of drive time.

Thanks to Melissa Miller and the Forwood staff for holding such a great event. Thanks for all the parents that helped out during the event. Special thanks to Alyssia and Will for score-keeping and Jason (a Brandywine School Board member) for keeping the matches flowing. Thanks to Warren for helping out teams that were having build issues.

Thanks to STEM Robotics: Steve and Foster for producing the event.

See you at the next event on Saturday 2 February at the Rt 9 Library and Innovation Center for “Innobots 2019”

One of the hardest things to do to create an autonomous routine is capturing the moves. Most of the time it’s trial and error creating an outline of the code and filling in distances and degree turns. You can measure distances to help, but the turns are a problem. Along with lifting arms in the right locations.

This process was developed by Turbodog and announced on the the VEXIQ forum. The setup gives you the ability to make 1″ moves forward and backwards and to turn 5 or 10 degrees to the right and left. By keeping track of the moves, you can piece together the full routine.

This method assumes that you are using the Modkit setup either on a PC or iPad

You need to configure your robot, in the example assume the drive base and two motors lifting the arm.

1) Change the drive train settings for your wheel types, track width (how far apart the wheels are side to side) and the wheelbase (how far apart are the wheels from front to back)

2) In the brain section you are going to write

when Start
do forever
clearLCD
newline
print “Left/right motor degree”
print (armleft) rotation in (deg)
print ( ) // this is a few space characters to space the numbers out
print (armleft) rotation in (deg)
end forever

3) In the controller blocks you want to put a series of these:

when controller-button-E up-pressed
broadcast forward1

when controller-button-E down-pressed
broadcast backward1

when controller-button-L up-pressed
broadcast left10

when controller-button-L down-pressed
broadcast left5

when controller-button-R up-pressed
broadcast right10

when controller-button-R down-pressed
broadcast right5

when controller-button-F up-pressed
broadcast armup

when controller-button-F down-pressed
broadcast armdown

when controller-button-F up-released
broadcast armstop

when controller-button-F down-released
broadcast armstop

 

4) And then in the motor for the arm you need to add

when start
set holding to on
set velocity to 50%

when armup
spin FWD

when armdown
spin REV

when armstop
stop

 

5) finally in the drive base motors

when start
set drive speed to 50%
set turn speed to 50%

when forward1
drive FWD 1 in

when backward1
drive REV 1 in

when left5
turn LEFT 5 deg

when left10
turn LEFT 10 deg

when right5
turn RIGHT 5 deg

when right10
turn RIGHT 10 deg

when drivestop
stop

You can now run the robot, single steps at a time to move forward, backwards, turn left and right. As you position the arm you can read the angles off of the display on the back. You need to remember as you start each run to make sure the arm is in the same starting position.

When you convert to the final routine you can add things together. So you can move 8″ vs making eight 1″ movements.

Link to a video tutorial

Good luck!!

Nine current teams and a few groups that are interested in VEX robotics came to the first Annual Delaware Technical and Community College Winter Workshop on 19 January at the Dover “Terry” Campus.

Jim Crane from RECF did an overview of VEX Competition robotics. He then went into a in-dept look at the 2018/19 VRC game “Turning Point”. Existing teams then split off to polish programs and make last minute hardware tweeks in preparation for some matches.

The other roboteers got an introduction to VEX parts, then played a round of “freeze tag” with robots. Each robot has a button on the front and back, when touched, the robot freezes. When touched again they start back up and can try to go and freeze another robot.

Jillian Whitney, the host for the event, ran scrimmages for the teams. The scrimmage was in a “grab and go” format, as teams are ready to drive they grab their robot and go get in the queue for the next match. 14 matches were played. High score for the day was 26. A number of teams had viable autonomous routines.

Just before lunch, Foster Schucker from STEM Robotics gave an overview on what STEM Robotics does and how Delmarvarobotics is set up.

The award for “Most Matches Played” went to a team from Reading Middle School, they played in all but one of the matches. Even with all those matches, they were able to make minor repairs and even do a wheel upgrade.