All About that Swerve Drive

Hey Everyone!


Today the team is relaxing from the hectic meeting on Saturday. The team had an amazing team building cookout. We built up an appetite after playing an intense game of football. Then the team members grilled delicious cheeseburgers and hot dogs. Afterwards, Chairman's made a hilarious "What's in the box video" where team members touched random things in a box with a blindfold on. Be sure to go and check it out at the Warren Robotics Youtube page in the next week or so! Currently, Chairman's is working on editing the video. Meanwhile, Design and Fabrication is working on cutting out the acrylic control board for the swerve drive. The swerve drive is an important piece in the robot that allows you to control each individual wheel separately. This allows more mobility in the robot. Additionally, Controls is having tasty pizza while working on wiring up the encoders. Members on controls said that the season has been fun so far and it has been a wonderful experience because of the collaborative group. Saturday was a great day, but the team has to get back to work!

Food Bank Bonanza!

Hey Everyone!

          Last Saturday, almost half the team visited the Northern Illinois Food Bank and helped out. Our team has gotten lots of help from the mayor and our community in general, so it was great to give back to the community who has helped us so much. The Northern Illinois Food Bank is committed to solving world hunger by providing nutritious meals to the impoverished in the Boone, DuPage, DeKalb, Grundy, Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, Ogle, Stephenson, Will, and Winnebago counties. The team members started out by unloading food from the truck, sorting it, and then organizing it into an assembly line. Later, when people started coming in, they helped them pick out and load their food into their cars. Overall, the whole experience was fun and rewarding for everyone. The team members that went enjoyed the experience a lot, and said they would do it again. Look out for a blog post in the coming weeks about our next community outreach event at Feed My Starving Children!

The Final Push

This weekend the team met Saturday, Sunday, and Monday from 8am to 4pm and even later. Chairman’s team has continued working on their Chairman’s award video. They have also begun editing and finalizing their essays for the Dean’s Award and the Chairman’s Award. With the build season coming to a close Chairman’s takes pride in reflecting on this season and even past seasons as they write of our teams successes in their award essays. Saturday the team received their tie-dye hoodies that they will be wearing this year during competitions. Everybody wore them on Monday for a team picture. In regards to the robot, before bag and tag last night Programming team made sure that their code was functional and ready for competition. Safety team continued working on the pit pieces. Mechanical team and Design team made last minute fine adjustments to the robot, while Controls team wired the controls board for the practice robot and hooked up the LED lights and sensors.  

LEGO Outreach Program

Yesterday members from Chairman’s team met in the printing lab to work on producing the shirts for our STEMbots outreach program. Today they opened up the Lego kits to test them out and get a feel for the sets they would be helping the kids create. Tomorrow elementary and middle school children will be coming for the outreach program. The plan is for them to use the Lego Education WeDo STEM Classroom packs to experience a series of cross-curricular theme-based activities while developing their skills in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, language, literacy, and social studies. Through the piloting of our Lego outreach activities we hope to be able to create a summer program to further teach children about Robotics. Members of Chairman’s are also creating poster designs for the Midwest Regional. While Chairman’s has been hard at work editing their Chairman’s award video, Programming, Mechanical, Controls, and Design team have been working together on building and maintaining the robot. They have been persisting recently with redesigning mechanisms for the robot as they have experienced problems with some of their previous designs.

Chairman's Video

Today Chairman’s team handed out raffle tickets to all the team members. The raffle tickets need to be sold for the Team Banquet on April 21^st. Each team member must sell 15 tickets for $5 each. They also spent the day filming in the auditorium for the Chairman’s award video and voice recording for the video. Programming team tested code on the inner chassis and troubleshot network problems. Safety team has continued their pursuit of painting the pit pieces today, as they painted trident details. Mechanical team redesigned the lift mechanism, shortened shafts, and moved back the cross brace for the chassis. Controls team wired the lift and got the Robot driving and lifting. Design team redesigned the claw for the game device, the bearing for the lift, and the shafts for the drive train as well as changed the pulley configuration. Tomorrow we will have a full day meeting, similar to today.

Picture Day

Yesterday the team didn’t meet due to the winter storm, so members enjoyed time at home. Today began with taking our team photo for the yearbook. It took awhile for us to be let into the auditorium, so we didn’t start to work till after 4pm. Chairman’s team is continuing their effort with the Chairman’s award video. Safety team continued to paint the pit. Programming team tested the game pieces today and troubleshot code. Mechanical team finished prototyping the robot, built the winch mechanism, and mounted the pulleys for the lift mechanism. Controls team worked on getting last year’s robot to work, and wired the encoders and gyro. Design team made amends to the mounting system for the claw and the spools that drive the lifts.

"The Voice"

To start off this Saturday Shaun Davis brought celebratory cookies because it was his birthday. Throughout the day members were able to grab cookies to keep them energized for working. Chairman’s team filmed the robot’s progress in the workroom for the Chairman’s award video, which will be due later in February. They also did test filming of some Trident members in order to find “the voice” that will speak during the video. Programming team finished the game device code and later in the day ran driver tests. Safety team painted over the blue and yellow pit to make it white. Mechanical team’s priority today was to finish prototyping the robot. Controls team wired the controls board and attached it to the chassis, and also made breakouts for the encoders. Design team worked hard today to modify both the P71 gearbox so that it could later be assembled. They also manufactured the claws for the tele-op game device and lift carriages, as well as mounted the lift to the robot, the controls to the robot, and the battery to the robot. 

20 Days Left

This Monday the leaders of Trident Robotics met with the mayor, Kristina Kovarik, to discuss what our team has already done with regards to community outreach and our goals moving forward in the Gurnee area.

To begin Tuesday’s meeting, Spencer addressed the team on a big change in structure. Going forward certain team members have been delegated with more specific aspects of the robot process. They will continue to work along with their subteam members but now there are also more definite leadership roles amongst the groups. Chairman’s team worked on their video application for the Chairman’s award, and they put up a bonus video from The Whisper Challenge on Youtube. Programming team worked on the mecanum drive code. Safety team painted the pit in the woodshop. Mechanical team made ground on constructing the prototype robot and Controls team split up their work to focus on the encoder, powerpoles, layout, PWM, and wire organization. Design team also split up their work to further develop the chassis, lift, and claw.

Adam Khan Comes To Visit

Thursday January 22nd, Adam Khan came to visit our team's lab. He stopped by to discuss with each subteam what they have been doing so far this season. Before leaving we showed him our 3 robots and gave him the opportunity to drive them. We are so grateful to have his support as a former WTHS student turned engineer.