2009 Season

2009 Team

Team 696 pictured with JawZ (2008)

Team members from left to right:
Back row: Roger Widholm (Mentor), Anahit, Sarah (rookie year 2008: electrical/programming), Vincent (rookie year 2009: drive train/media), Laura (rookie year 2008: drive train/machining), Arjun (rookie year 2008: mechanisms), Emily (rookie year 2006: systems), Allen (rookie year 2009: programming)
Middle row: Biju (rookie year 2008: mechanisms), Muntasir (rookie year 2007: mechanisms), Will (rookie year 2009: programming/electrical), Antonella (rookie year 2006: mechanisms/systems), Rozina (rookie year 2009: media), Kim (rookie year 2009: media), Megan (rookie year 2009: drive train/chassis)
Front row: Ruben (rookie year 2009: electrical), Vahagn (rookie year 2009: mechanisms), Arielle (rookie year 2008: CAD)
Not pictured: Francesca (rookie year 2009: media), Gilbert (rookie year 2009: media), Arno (rookie year 2009: media), Derek (rookie year 2009: systems)

Officers

President - Antonella
Vice-president - Arielle
Treasurers - Sarah, Muntasir
Secretary - Arielle (training new secretary)
Safety Czar - Arjun

Members

The 2009 season saw a huge shift in team mentorship. Our longtime faculty adviser, Mr. DeVore, left the team to prepare for retirement, and our ROP adviser, Andy, moved to San Francisco. The team spent the first two months of the school year in limbo, unsure of its future or even its existence. Fortunately, two families, the Widholms and the Wilbys, pushed to keep the team alive, spending countless hours organizing meetings at their respective houses and running fundraisers. Later, Roger became "the man with the keys," and Hannah joined the ranks as ROP adviser to ensure our validity as a school program.

There was also a considerable shift in student membership. At the beginning of the season, the team numbered just eight veterans, the smallest number of returning veterans since 2005. At one point, the rookie members outnumbered the veterans two to one. Unfortunately, we lost many of our recruited rookie members, but still gained enough members to have a robust team. As has always been the case in robotics, our members have had to balance school responsibilities with robotics and numerous other activities in which we partake. Two of our members were active contributors to Clark's Publications class, a very time-intensive class, and other members participated on Clark's Scholastic Bowl team as well as in many other clubs. Some members participated in local activities such as cricket, fencing, community orchestras, sports, and even ballroom dancing.

Mentors

We had many wonderful mentors who generously donated hours of their time to help us this season. Hannah and Ian helped the programming team immensely with learning the new programming software, Labview, and developing camera software. Roger mentored the drive train subsystem and spent hours machining at Tru-Cut. Mark helped with machining at Hardcore Racing, and machined tooling for our metal-working machines. Kevin mentored the mechanical team, sharing droves of information about tools, design, and construction with the mech team members and other members who would help out with certain tasks. Mr. Jianu built field elements and made incredible parts in 696's shop using just a drill press, a belt sander, and a few other tools. Martha and Laurie coordinated anything from meals, to competition giveaways, to transportation for both students and the robot, to anything else that came up throughout the season. Michael, Scott, and Harout, student alumni, helped with CAD, fabrication of parts, and organizing the workroom. We couldn't have done it without these generous individuals who gave up their weekends, relaxation time, and ski season to make our program a success!

Build Season

For pictures of the 2009 season, click here.

Read some articles about Team 696's 2009 season here.

Subsystems

Systems - Emily, Antonella (CAD), Derek
Mechanical: Conveyors - Antonella (lead), Arjun, Biju, Muntasir, Vahagn (Mech Team - Nothin' but love!)
Drive Train - Laura (lead), Megan, Vincent
Electrical/Programming - Sarah (lead), Will, Allen, Ruben

Media

Video - Gilbert and Arno
Photos - Francesca V. and Francesca W. (Francesca-squared!)
Logos and Photoshop - Vincent
Web Design - Antonella

Six Weeks

As all good engineers strive to do, we are always reiterating and honing our design process to come up with the best and most creative designs possible. This season, we focused on an approach that emphasized strategy and "thinking outside the box." We started off on the first day by learning all the game rules backwards and forwards (we try to learn from our mistakes!), and developing strategies that would play the game well. Due to the complexity of the scoring, we tried to isolate the most effective scoring strategies by tossing the game pieces at moving targets and evaluating the accuracy.

The next day, we had a "design workshop" where every member came up with every possible idea they could think of for a robot to play the game. The point was to come up with innovative ideas that would spark great design ideas. For the next week, we split off into groups and prototyped (or made CAD models of) various design ideas. The first Friday after kickoff, we had a design presentation, where members presented their designs to a panel of all team members, mentors, and guests from JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory). Of the four designs presented, we chose (by majority rule) a simple design with three conveyors working together and a lot of storage space for game pieces.

For the remainder of the season, we were split into subsystems, which worked together to make the robot function seamlessly. In previous years, we had fallen into the trap of only working in CAD, and not knowing how each subsystem would function in the physical world. Arjun, Biju, Muntasir, and Vahagn, led by Kevin, corrected this problem by placing heavy emphasis on materials testing, and created a versatile prototype which we used to extensively test any new idea that came up.

The programming team, led by Will, tackled the tough task of learning the new programming software, Labview. They spent many weeks testing camera software, and were eventually able to track the other robots' trailers successfully. They also developed many different pre-programmed autonomous modes, as well as developed a programming-controlled mechanical solution to the traction control dilemma. Read the summary on our 2009 Robot, String Theory, to find out details on the robot's control system.

By the end of the season, we had a well-built, well-programmed, well-tested 'bot, and were ready to head off to competition!

Testing the newly assembled and christened String Theory in our school's cafeteria.

Competition - Los Angeles Regional

Drive Team

Coach - Antonella
Driver - Laura, Arielle
Operator - Will, Arno
Human Player - Biju, Muntasir, Vincent

Due to the stress of having such a drastic leadership change at the beginning of the season, we were only able to attend one regional this season, the Los Angeles Regional. Hopes were high going into the regional, and we were confident that our mechanism would play the game stupendously. Unfortunately, due to lack of driving practice, we did not perform up to our potential in matches. We placed 32nd overall, and were picked by the 8th seeded alliance as an offensive bot, but were eliminated in quarterfinals. However, it was great fun playing against 1388 (Eagle Robotics), 399 (Eagle Robotics), and 1671 (Buchanan Robotics). Thank you for being such fun and honorable opponents, and thank you to team 1160 (Firebird Robotics) and to team 848 (Bambots) for being such great alliance partners!

Thanks to 1160 and 848 for a great alliance!