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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.

Eight teams from three of the Delaware Technical and Community College campuses played in the DTCC Winter Classic sponsored by AT&T. The event was the culmination of DTCC Robotics Academy Program.

Teams were:

8 – Bound Bots – Wilmington
7 – Ultimate – Wilmington
6 – Fusion Robotics – Wilmington
5 – Akinators – Wilmington
4 – The Kingsmen – Terry (Dover)
3 – The Acers – Terry (Dover)
2 – Kolala-fication – Owens (Georgetown)
1 – A.C.C.D.G – Owens (Georgetown)

After 22 Qualification matches, the Elimination part of the tournament started. Lots of great matches in the Semifinals, with a 34 point tie. The best of 3 format had both Semifinals going to three matches.

In the end the #1 alliance of Ultimate and Akinators winning the close score finals against A.C.C.D.G and Kolala-fication.

Guest Judges for the event were from Penfield Robotics, Penfield NY and the local area. The professional engineers from GM had great conversations with the roboteers about the robot design, strategy and what their plans were for improving the robots.

The Kingsmen won the Judges award for their very detailed Engineering Notebook.

Ultimate was the Excellence Award winner with their outstanding performance (#1 Seed, Tournament Winner and top marks in their interview). They will attend the Turning Point at Caesar Rodney

Robotics Academy at Delaware Tech

AT&T awarded Delaware Tech for the fall Robotics Academy where 45 high school students from 16 Delaware high schools statewide learned about STEM-based concepts while being exposed to a college campus environment. Students worked in teams to execute an engineering design, build a robot, and solve new challenges they faced along the way. Students persevered through prototyping and design iteration to execute the robot that will compete today. The Academy focused on using a myriad of disciplines such as science, math, programming, and engineering. By working in teams, students enhanced lifelong soft skills such as teamwork, leadership, and communication. In addition students had the opportunity to hear from local experts such as the Chief Roboteer from STEM Robotics, virtually connect with a coding company across the country, or tour a local facility to learn about the industry needs and how robotics are pivotal in the world today.

The Game Design Committees of both the VRC and VIQ competitions released the August editions of the games. Since the game release at Worlds this Spring, 1000’s of roboteers have been looking at the rules and asking questions. This update does some clarifications and adds some great examples.

VEX IQ – Next Level

Next Level is a stacking game, teams have one minute minute to stack spools and then hang.

Next Level Game Manual

VEX VRC – Turning Point

Turning point is a fast paced shooting game, with a battle at the end for the parking space.

Turning Point Game Manual

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These are the manuals you should be following until the next rules update later this winter.