Day 9 - Long and tiring day with our robots
GUAN XUN:
Today was a long and busy day. We worked from 8am to 11pm on our robots today and came very close to completing the second one, but found out that it was nowhere nearly as good as it needed to be in order to do what it needed to do when we tested it during a friendly sparring session. Which was a bad feeling at first, but then some sort of relief later on because now we know what improvements we need to make on the robot to make it better. We plan to make modifications to our functioning but improvable robot tomorrow.
Yup, so the whole day today was spent making the robot. We had already planned what we were going to do so things moved pretty fast from the moment we started working. Experience is really a huge, large, enormous, gigantic factor in an exercise such as this. The hardest part about making the robots then could be avoided, and that hardest part would be tackling problems that pop up when you don't expect them to. It takes you by surprise and you end up having to make modifications to your product. And after you've made all those modifications to your product and look at the overall thing you've made, you just think to yourself, 'I could've done that in a better way' or 'I could have put that together in a more organized fashion'. Well, at least I identify where I have room for improvement.
I need to rest up for tomorrow! It's definitely going to be a long day again, especially for me as I'm responsible for the programming of the robots, which is gonna kick in tomorrow as the mechanical development stage of the robots come to an end. Rest rest rest.
EDWARD:
Today's great! It was a super good feeling to return to the workshop and get down to all the intensive tasks again. It was very useful that we created a checklist for the work that we had to complete today. I pasted it on the board in front of our working desk, so we could constantly refer to it and work on what’s important.. A simple measure to keep us all in check! I highly recommend the checklist.
Seeing everyone's 'art pieces' take shape, it’s fun to see how interesting some robot designs and strategies can be. However much designs may seem to play the biggest part in determining which team will go the furthest, it most often isn’t. There are a lot more variable factors that are invisible to many now. Till we actually put our robots to the test (under the contest environment), we can never be prepared for unexpected failures or lame hiccups that might occur along the way. Sometimes it boils down to luck. But well, who says that doesn’t play a part in victories.
I love it that our robot doesn’t actually look like one. I prefer calling it a stronghold - many "surprises" packed in one stationary sturdy frame, somewhat like a Jack-in-the-box. (though i would definitely prefer it to pack something as impactful as the Pandora's Box). To quote Kelsey, "We may not win the contest, but we'll definitely win the most stylish robot." (I'll take some photos of it tmr!)
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Fly.
Wonderful place. Wonderful people. Wonderful experience.
Wonder if it can last just a little longer.
PENGHUI:
It’s the start of the second week, and back to work.
It’s kinda interesting to realize that after a while of doing the same thing, it becomes second nature. Like the standard procedures for operating machines and how to drill/cut holes – it all becomes muscle memory. It’s startling to realize it because these things usually only come after weeks of practising. Maybe under such intensity of concentration the process is sped up. But I think now we’ll have fewer accidents. :)
Anyway, yeah, same old, we came, we sawed, we conkered with the hammer.
KELLY:
It has been a long and very tiring day. I spent the whole day machining and because of my inexperience I made many mistakes and had to redo a lot of things. But every mistake is a lesson learnt - the importance of planning and doing things methodologically, how to be precise/accurate when making measurements, how to use the available tools efficiently etc.
On a brighter note, our team’s robots are coming along pretty well! All that’s left to do is some minor modifications and then putting them all together in the starting box (a space that’s 15.5 by 15.5 by 18 inches). Oh yes America doesn’t use the metric system but uses stuff like inches, pounds and psi instead. Sometimes that poses some challenges for the rest of us when we try to get an idea of the dimensions, but I think after 1 whole week of working with these units we are more familiar with them now.
JIN KAI:
Had rather cheap pizza at MIT's student centre today. It costs ~3USD person for two generous slices. It's interesting to compare the prices for goods and services between Singapore and Boston. For instance, eating out is really expensive here. At the same time, the tipping culture creates really good service (at least for the restaurants we've been to). Some US products are really cheap here, for instance Dr Dre's Beats headphones. If only we can have the best of both worlds...
YONG CHENG:
It feels great to go back to the workshop and start on our robots again. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done and I felt that there was still not enough time to complete the building. My team was busy the whole day and we even needed the technicians and staff to tell us to pack up for lunch. We completely lost track of time! This was how busy we were.
We worked till late in the night and I almost got into an accident. I used a large drill bit for drilling and it went out of control because the force upwards caused my robot’s base to fly upwards. Luckily, there was no one hurt and no damage to the robot. Phew… Yuan Nan also got into another accident while trying to sand a piece of plastic. Looks like we really need to be more careful even though we are in a rush for time.
After the whole day, everyone is feeling tired and wants to get as much rest as possible. I have had no problems sleeping these few days, haha! I’m looking forward to tomorrow as we will soon begin the testing of the robots!
HEI KERN:
Today has been an awesome day for me (as always in MIT). But today is also an awesome day because I finally got to meet up with Tania from Robocon 2010! Since the last Robocon, our group has been very close to each other and even after one year, we are still pretty much in contact with each other! There is a Thai friend that has visited me in Singapore before and now I get to visit Tania here in MIT. It is just awesome to be able to meet up with friends after so long. Wonder when we will meet again...
IAN:
It makes me feels so sad that we are two-thirds the way through with IDC Robocon. There had been so much fun with everybody, so many nice places visited and so much good food enjoyed. Just when we thought we just started, we are actually already reaching the final lap of the race towards the end.
I would like to share my thoughts on robot-building.
Today, my team finalised our contest strategy while continuing to build our Caltech-cannon-pulling robot and police-car-on-the-dome robot. As usual, we continue to encounter problems with building our robots along the way. For instance, although it is easy to say that you want to build a hook for the cannon pulling robot, several additional problems must be solved after building a reliable hook:
- Where do you place the hook on the robot;
- How do you keep it in place till it's time for deployment;
- How do you ensure that the hook always works when it is deployed by the robots?
As you can see, robot construction requires a complex thought process. There may be questions that you will only realise that you must consider after building a part of the robot physically.
It is certainly frustrating to build a robot and realise that a part of it does not fit in properly; even worse, to discover a new robot design half-way that could have been better for the robot's overall performance. To solve these problems, you need to go through the tedious motion of unscrewing and screwing back bolts and nuts on the robot. Even careful planning using CAD software like Solidworks only works to a certain extent when you are building a robot manually. Problems will always pop out from nowhere, especially when you least expect them. Maybe a gear may not latch on to another gear properly, or some screw is too close to another screw, hence, making a certain assembly virtually impossible.
Thus, in robot-building, it is best to keep things as simple as possible. Don't do elaborate and unnecessary gear reductions and multiple hinges, if possible. They almost never work perfectly. Also, these mechanisms, if done well, do their jobs perfectly, but they make repairs tough work. Also, it could be beneficial to do quick experiments with new ideas. Make that hook and try to hook it to that hole in different possible orientations! Make that ball holder and put balls through it! Even if you fail, you can find out what you can't do quickly. Indeed, it's a quick, dirty and practical approach to robot- building. It's slow, but everything works out in the end.
Ok, back to reality! Today some small kids visited Studio 7 at 10am. Dan Frey gave them and their parents a child-friendly introduction to robotics, in a bid to get the kids interested in engineering in future.
Dan demonstrates the functions of the remote control to the kids
Dan waves to the photographers
Little boy with the remote control
Alright, seeding day is on Thursday (4 August). My team is finally, shall I say, on schedule. Maybe we can complete everything by Wednesday, right in time for Thursday.