Week 6

We put the final touches on the robot, tested it out, named it, and shipped it out.

Building Disco Ballulator - February 9-12, 2009

We had built a robot, yet we didn't know what to call it. We had Af Robot last year, and we wanted to keep the streak. So, we started brain storming. What could refer to both our sub-theme, disco balls, and the robot itself? We came up with many different options, but the team thought that Disco Ballulator was the best choice because it had disco ball in the name, and the thinking is that it makes all the other alliances' robots disoriented when it goes by because it is that groovy.

Once we had named the robot, we could take it down to the cafeteria to test Disco Ballulator. The programming team was working as hard as ever to perfect their code. They worked on autonomous, and traction control code. In addition to the programming team working on their code, the potential payload specialists practiced scoring in the trailers that weren't in use. After a couple of runs, we noticed that the balls were getting stuck, so some people made a divider that went from the front of the loader to the shooters. This was to ensure that the orbit balls wouldn't get stuck in the middle of a qualifying round, or worse, an elimination round!

In addition to working on the robot, we had to decorate, and repair our crate from last year. Last year, we had a time crunch and were unable to decorate our crate properly. So, we decided that this year was going to be different. Some members worked on the design, and came up with a giant disco ball on each side of the crate, which would give the effect of a giant-crate-sized disco ball instead of a ply-wood crate. They used the same colors that were on Disco Ballulator, and the drivers' station.

Houston Scrimmage - February 13-15, 2009

The DiscoBots and 441 Reagan Robotics came together and set up a Houston Scrimmage at Reagan High School. They invited every team in Houston to come, and each team would pitch in with supplies such as fueling stations, orbit balls, and field borders. We had moved all of our stuff from Lamar High School, to Reagan High School on the Friday before the scrimmage to help set everything up, and test the robot in an open area.

441 Reagan Robotics, 1480 Davis Robotics, 2664 Chavez Robotics, and the DiscoBots came on Saturday. Everybody set up their drive stations and made sure their robots worked. The team from Chavez High School was having some problems with their robot. So, some of the team came together to help make their robot work. Meanwhile, the teams held matches to have their perspective drivers practice handling their new robots before they had to ship them off. Additionally, we added some aesthetic elements to our robot such as placing our sponsors' stickers on the back of the robot, putting 2587 on both sides as well as on the electronics protecting flap in the front, and decorations on the bumpers. We worked on our autonomous.

On Sunday, 441 Reagan Robotics, 624 CRyptonite, 2585 Bellaire Robotics, and we came to the scrimmage. We played a few scrimmages and everyone worked on their strategy. We added sensors to our shooters, which enabled us to write a program to automatically unjam orbit balls that might have been caught in the shooter.

Last Day Before Shipping - February 16, 2009

It was crunch time. The programmers were programming as fast as they could so they could perfect their autonomous before the robot was shipped. Others were trying to cheese hole a few last pieces to make sure that the robot was underweight. In addition, the controls team was making sure that all of the wires on the control board were both not excessively long, and secured into one spot to ensure that nothing would come loose if another robot hit Disco Ballulator.

The build team was tweaking the robot while waiting for the people working on the crate to finish. They had to reinforce the crate and make places where cord could be tied to because we were going to strap our robot into the crate to ensure that it didn't roll around. So, after they had finished doing that, we all took the robot, and crate outside at the loading dock to place it in. 10 feet of poly cord later, we thought we had done a good enough job securing the robot, so we put the bumpers in, and the lid on tight. We were done with the build season.

To commemorate all of the work we had done over the six weeks, we made a video.

Go to week 5 - Return to the 2009 build page