GUAN XUN:
Day 2 of this competition was really quite fun. My group also managed to get a lot of work done, making much progress in the design of the robots we want to make as well as even completing one of them.
There was breakfast as usual in the morning, followed by the daily safety briefing/question answering session that I think helped many of us in clearing doubts about the rules and what can be done during the competition, avoiding any simple mistakes that the teams could make.
I now see a structure forming within my group, with each of us 4 group members bring designated the roles of programmer, robot #1 machinist, robot #2 machinist and finally a SolidWorks (computer 3d drawing) artist. I am confident that our group can continue to make great progress in the coming days!
I especially like the times like mealtimes whereby I manage to hang out with a mixed international bunch of people. It's really fun speaking to them and learning about some of their daily life, even though sometimes the communication may not be that smooth.
I'm now going to sleep at 11.45pm and have to be up by 06.15am tomorrow. Which is not healthy for a person like me who requires normally 12hrs of sleep a day, but the extra effort is all worth it! :)
KELLY:
Today was a really productive day – we got to test some of our mechanical designs by fabricating some prototypes at the well equipped Pappalardo lab. I also took a basic class in Solidworks, which is a powerful 3D modeling and simulation tool.
It was fun and fulfilling seeing our ideas morph into real life mechanisms that could achieve a specific task. Our enthusiasm carried us through the evening session at Studio 7, where we worked on our designs for our cannon-puller bot.
Before that we went for dinner at an Italian pizza/pasta restaurant. I ordered pasta for myself and the portion was humongous (typical American-sized portion?). I could only finish 1/3 of it, so I felt really bad and resolved to order just appetizers for subsequent dinners. Let’s see if this resolve lasts till tomorrow!
HEI KERN:
Today, I will be talking about how much this competition has strengthened my passion for engineering and design. Although this competition has just only finished its second day, I feel that it is shaping up to be one of the best, if not the best, design and build challenges I have experienced.
I like the way the competition arena is built such that teams can only do well and score points in some, but not all of the potential scoring areas. There are so many ways of playing the games! I can’t wait to see the different Robots coming together.
I also liked the way that the machining capabilities here at MIT means that you are not restricted in your design in anyway whatsoever. As long as you can imagine your design, people here can help you create that design. As a result, I have amazing freedom to choose and make exactly how I want my robot to be. I don’t know how to emphasise this, but this point makes me the happiest!!! This freedom is amazing!
My team
Then there are the awesome team members and IDC staff. Although this is a competition, the atmosphere in studio 7 (main design area) is just so positive. My team is working together seamlessly. The professors, MIT students as well as the machinist are all professional and have helped me countless times in my quest to better my robot.
IAN:
Today is the second day of robot-building. Despite being faced with such a difficult engineering task that requires considering lots of trade-offs, some teams have already built their first robots and they were spotted testing it on the competition model. I am apprehensive of what my Purple team (continues to have only 3 team members, with the absence of the Moroccans) can do. But we are making progress. In fact, we stayed up till 11pm in Studio 7 fabricating materials for our first robot.
It's really interesting to have like-minded people though coming from different cultures, solving engineering design problems with me. Other teams also don't mind sharing their ideas with my team too. As a result of this collaborative effort and the advice of the various studio helpers, I've learnt a lot in the past 2 days.
PENGHUI:
Urgh. Tired.
Today was intense. Too intense. To describe in words. Or pictures. So no pictures for today, just plain words.
Reason A: About 9 straight hours of designing and building. Even during lunch you’re thinking about it.
Reason B: Testosterone levels are super high due to alpha(geek)male/female hormones all around.
Reason C: NS for a year and 6 months.
P.S. On the upside, we got a new team member, Park! Guess where he’s from! :)
EDWARD:
With every team having access to the tried-and-tested robot designs used in 2011 Spring 2.007, it will take a bunch load more of innovation and creativity to come up with a breakthrough design. For now, my group is focusing on simple and safe robots, employing techniques that have high percentage of success.
It was great to have Kelsey, a senior undergrad in MIT, in our group to share her experience and skills on creating some of these robots, as well as guide us through the design process. There was also much to take away from Taketo and Hyeong Sook who are strong in their design and technical fields, and quick to foresee issues that might occur. I really appreciate my teammates who were very open to ideas and carefully evaluated each one, taking into consideration everyone's involvement to attain a collaborated effort (:
JIN KAI:
The Koreans have arrived!
New member from Korea joined our group today. Their flight got delayed, so they only arrived late last night (25th July). Same problem, communication is difficult. Google translate can only help so much as the meaning gets distorted when the sentence is too long/complex.
I am the guy in yellow
A basic profile of my team mates:
- Brazillian (nickname Jow): 18 years old, year 2, top 4 of 30 chosen to come here.
- Japanese (Kazuaki Ozehki): 23 years old, year 3, specialises in something regarding hydrodynamics and robots (??)
- Korean (nickname Kim): Part of a team of 6 that won a competition last year in Korea to come here. Haha, he keeps saying “pardon” because his english is quite bad. Can be cute/annoying depending on how you look at it (...)
It's dangerous to generalise but it's interesting to see how the professors we have came into contact with here do things compared to teachers in Singapore:
- Interjecting while some other teacher is speaking is perfectly fine, even appreciated - provided that you are saying something relevant of course. Whereas in Singapore the person would be considered as interrupting, and would most likely start off with a long-winded "pardon me for interrupting but I have something to add which may be of value, but do pardon me for interrupting......"
- Very 委婉 (tactful) way of speaking. So when talking about sensitive issues like safety in the lab, protecting our valuables from thieves or taking care of the electronics we are given, they say it in a very neutral way.
- While they emphasise safety, they don't go on and on about it. And to augment the fact that we can't operate all the machines, they have staff on hand to help us with the more dangerous machinery, instead of saying "we'll strike it of the can-do list then".
Okay that's all. I might add on to these thoughts to make them less fragmented as the days go by.
YONG CHENG:
The day started with the daily briefing by Dan Frey about the proposal of new rules and regulations, as well as the answering of various questions. What I find that is that this competition is really quite a flexible one. Something that is not stated in the rules is usually is not forbidden unless it changes the game too much. In a sense, it means that we are not really restricted and we can come up with our own unique ideas to defend and attack in the game.
Our group during breakfast
For the first half of the day, we continued with the design of our 2 vehicles. We have our new member! A Korean named Lee Chang Woo. Luckily, he is a mechanical engineer in training. Our team is complete with a programmer (Benoit), electrical engineer (Yuan Nan), mechanical engineer (Chang Woo) and myself (designer?? Lol). I don’t know if I’m qualified to be a designer, but that is what I can contribute most right now along with drawing in Solidworks.
My team
In the afternoon, I went to the advance Solidworks tutorial about running simulations and analysis. It was interesting, but sadly I was using an earlier version of Solidworks and could not access some files necessary for the tutorial. After that, we managed to build our first small moving robot after Chang Woo and I made the base, while Yuan Nan and Benoit configured the Arduino Board. Now we can really see some progress being made (:
Prof Shao Hui brought us again to a restaurant called Bertucci’s Italian Restaurant at Main Street, near MIT. Over there, they served huge servings of pasta and pizzas at a reasonable price. I almost couldn’t finish my food!
Our group at Bertucci’s. Can you see the size of our servings!?
I ordered a Chicked Picatta for dinner..
After that, I proceeded back to Studio 7 to meet my team to work on the car. So far, so good... Benoit made good progress in making the Arduino Board work well with the wireless controls. The next thing to work on is our main robot for scoring. We aim to finish at least half of it by tomorrow so that we can start the troubleshooting after that ASAP (:
I’m glad that my team members work very well together in the team. Even though Chang Woo just joined in, he could immediately participate and contribute. I think our team has quite a good combination of individuals. Right now, we hope that our design plan can work without too much of troubleshooting to be done. (: