2007 Season

2007 Team

Team 696 pictured with Robot Man Jan (2006)

Team members from left to right:
Back row: Mr. DeVore (Faculty Advisor), Rayhan (rookie year 2007), Will (rookie year 2006: arm/mechanical), Gevorg (rookie year 2005: arm/mechanical), Alec (rookie year 2005: electrical/programming), Josh (rookie year 2005: systems), Michael (rookie year 2005: arm/CAD), Scott (rookie year 2005: drive train/machining)
Middle row: Emily (rookie year 2006: systems), Antonella (rookie year 2006: drive train/chassis), Nitesh (rookie year 2007), Muntasir (rookie year 2007), Dalar (rookie year 2006: CAD), Glory (rookie year 2005: electrical/programming), Nick (rookie year 2005: arm/mechanical), John (rookie year 2005: systems)
Front row: Andranik (rookie year 2007: electrical/programming), Angie (rookie year 2006: electrical/programming)
Not pictured: Mrs. Hughes (Faculty Advisor), Karo (rookie year 2005: wing/mechanical)

Officers

President - John
Vice-president - Nick
Treasurer - Antonella
Secretary - Angie

Members

This season, the team consisted of 18 members, including four rookie members who joined the team in the fall after compiling a portfolio and competing in a team-sponsored engineering contest. Two students from Glendale Community College also joined our ranks as student-mentors. Our team was very well rounded, with a team average GPA of 4.2 (the highest overall GPA since the team's conception). The team members, in addition to robotics and school, had a wide variety of interests and talents. Most (if not all) of our members participated in the FSEA (Future Scientists and Engineers of America) club at Clark. A few students were also in the Clark publications class, which publishes both the yearbook and school newspaper, as well as Clark's EAST (Environmental and Spatial Technology) class. Other students participated in archery, photography, web design, music, and art, at Clark or in local organizations.

Mentors

The 2007 season saw a wealth of talented mentors spending countless hours to make our program a success. Mrs. Hughes and Mr. DeVore, our faculty advisers, supervised over 300 hours of meeting time in the robotics room at Clark. Mark, Aram, and Roger machined countless parts at their respective machine shops, and provided design advice for each subsystem. David was an enormous asset in mentoring the mechanical and drive train subsystems in design and construction. Bryce and Hannah worked with the electrical and programming teams, and supervised the pneumatics for the wings. Areg, the 2006 Inventor specialist, helped with the CAD for the mechanical subsystems. Tony, Avo, and Andy assisted the mechanical subsystems with construction and design. The construction of the field elements was spurred by Mr. Jianu, who in addition worked with all subsystems on a variety of tasks.

Build Season

Check out photos from our 2007 season.

Read some news articles from 2007 about Team 696.

Subsystems

Systems - John (lead), Emily, Michael, Josh
Mechanical: Wings - Karo (lead)
Mechanical: Arm - Will (lead), Gevorg, Nick, Michael
Drive Train/Chassis - Antonella (lead), Scott
Electrical/Programming/Pneumatics - Alec (lead), Angie, Andranik, Glory
CAD - Michael, Dalar

We spent a great amount of the build season prototyping and designing mechanisms for the robot, before we finally decided on using 2 pneumatics wing lifts and a pneumatics-powered arm/grabber.

During the first two weeks of build, we discussed the positives and negatives of using ramp lifts or pneumatic lifts. Our team broke up into several smaller teams, and we prototyped possibilities for the robot. Our eventual decision was to use Karo's wing designs, which made our robot greatly depend on compressors and air.

The next phase in our design was choosing an arm that would complement the robot's wings. We had decided to make the wings our priority, which was an important decision because of weight limitations. After narrowing the choice down to two prototypes, we spent several meetings discussing the effectiveness of each, and decided to choose a versatile arm and grabber design that also required pneumatics.

In the remaining weeks of the build, members of the team, including Antonella who designed an incredible chassis for the bot (and gave it a new set of wheels!) and Michael (who designed several mechanical parts and held the master copy of the robot design), focused on design issues and resolving problems with both the arm and wings.

At some point, we had discovered that we were stalling the arm by running it with a non-backdriveable Mabuchi motor, so we changed it to a much more effective globe motor. Due to weight limitations, we also had to change our robot concept from a 5 foot robot to a 4 foot robot, which also aided in stability for the wings.

The completion of the robot really came down to the last weekend of our build season, but we made it!

This year, our team was divided into several sub-teams, consisting primarily of systems (which focused on robot integration, cost and weight estimates, and strategy), mechanical (broken up into drive train/chassis, arm, and wings along with Inventor designing), and electrical/programming/pneumatics (who spent a long duration of the build helping with prototypes and developing codes for both the wings, arm, and camera). Many members were integral parts of the sub-teams, although we were all able to contribute to all of the different subsystems, whether it was through fabrication, Inventoring, robot control board design, or prototyping.

After a tough six weeks, The Burd was ready to Rack and Roll!

Competitions

Drive Team

Coach - John, David
Driver - Josh
Operator - Karo
Human Player - Nick

Los Angeles Regional

Photos from the 2007 Los Angeles Regional.

The team was excited going into our first regional of the season in Los Angeles. The robot was largely untested, and still had kinks to work out, but we were confident in our design and our ability to perform. We were not disappointed. The pneumatic-winged design was one-of-a-kind at the competition, and was able to score 30 to 60 points very reliably. We even performed, in practice matches, the first lift of the competition! After the Thursday practice matches, we were looking forward to the next two days of the competition. Early on in the Friday matches, our drive train failed due to having the wrong flex couplings, and we were without driving ability for three matches. We weren't able to use our arm to score ringers, with which we often scored up to 256 points. However, we actually won one of the matches just by lifting our partners for 60 points!.

The Saturday matches were an exhilarating experience. We seeded 12th at the end of the qualification matches, and were picked by team 980, who captained the 7th seeded alliance. Along with 980 (Thunderbots) and team 580 (RoboticVikes), we made it all the way to the final matches. With 980 and 580 playing defense and 696 playing offense, we had two exciting final matches versus 330 (The Beach 'Bots), 254 (The Cheesy Poofs) and Team 4 (Element). We ended up taking second place. Thanks to 580 and 980 for a great alliance, and to 330, 254, and 4 for the thrilling final matches!

San Diego Regional

Photos from the 2007 San Diego Regional.

Two weeks later came the San Diego Regional. Of course, winning isn't everything, but the team in general had a feeling we could win, for the first time in Team 696 history. Our awesome drive team was well-practiced and ready for action, and the problems with subsystems we had had at the Los Angeles Regional had been resolved. We seeded sixth after the qualification matches, and were picked by 330 of the 1st seeded alliance, who had been our honorable opponents at our last regional. The third robot on our alliance was team 835 (The Sting), from Michigan. We played well through the exciting quarterfinal and semifinal matches, but unfortunately, in the final matches team 835's robot was damaged, and could not be repaired in the five minutes allotted. According to FIRST rules, the next-seeded team fills in in this instance, so our alliance was joined by a fourth member, team 1216 (Oak Park Knights), also from Michigan. We ended up winning the San Diego Regional, and our four alliance members were invited to the championships in Atlanta!

Atlanta!

Community members see Team 696 off before we leave for Nationals

After three nearly-sleepless weeks of fundraising, planning, and intense team-spiritedness, it was off to Atlanta for the first time! Though we were all extremely tired, we were very excited to be representing our team and school on an international stage. After a hard Thursday trying to fix the mechanical problems that had cropped up during the last regional (imagine trying to be cognizant having had only an hour and a half of sleep), we entered the Friday matches with high spirits. Unfortunately, a slew of mechanical and electrical problems kept The Burd from performing up to its potential. We ended up placing in the bottom half of the Newton division. But as we know, in FIRST it's not about winning, it's about the journey taken. It was such an honor to be invited and be able to experience the FIRST championship. It was an experience, and an entire season, that no team member will ever forget.

In the words of Karo, "La Burd '07! To be remembered forever!"