Paly Robotics

Hi all!
With the new school year off to a start, we'd like to make something new for this year. Announcing... a new site design! Let me explain... The current site is a Drupal site that hasn't been changed in code for a long time, meaning that the CSS files and PHP files have been intact for the last several years. With HTML5 on the rise and Web 2.0 going down, it's time for a change in our site. This year, our goal (or at least my goal) is for Team 8 to receive the Webmaster award for the best website in the event.

A link to the information for our Silicon Valley Regional Competition can be found here.

Directions to the venue can be found here.

Paly Robotics has a new promo video!

You can download it with audio here: http://www.mediafire.com/?m2y1byvynjj

Paly Robotics team ranked higher than ever in Portland last weekend. Out of a field of 61 high schools and technical schools – Paly's robot out-performed all but 3. Even more awesome than that is the fact that in virtually all our matches, our robot scored all the points – 42 goals in all.

Here's an animation of the 2010 FIRST challenge if you haven't seen it yet.

Finishing at the #4 position in the top 8 teams gave Paly the privilege of having the 4th pick in choosing it's alliance partners in the finals. The team chose Aviation High School Des Moines, WA and Tahoma Senior High School in Maple Valley, WA as its partners in the final elimination rounds.

After battling through a grueling 4 round elimination in the quarter finals, Paly went on to outscore its opponent in the semi's but some unfortunate penalty calls kept a championship finish out of reach.

It wasn't an easy regional by any means either as the Portland regional total elimination match score was 139 vs. 135 at the San Diego Regional on the same weekend. Gunn ranked 26th at that regional with a total of 14 goals.

Our robot was also rock solid as well – able to push any opponent out of the way as necessary and rugged enough to withstand the pounding of every match. One very unique feature which makes Paly stand out from the crowded competition is its deployable large green & white sail. If you get a chance to watch an archived match, notice how the sail can be used to catch balls and defend goals but is also able to collapse to allow the robot to cross the field through the tunnels.

Check out one of our matches here.

Friday

9:30, Win 5-0; 6 points scored by us!

10:27, Win 1-0

11:57, Win 4-7

2:55, Lose 3-8

4:12, Win 0-2

5:12, Tie 3-3

Saturday

9:45, Lose 3-4

10:39, Win 7-4

11:57, Win 5-2

Eliminations

Quarterfinals Match 1, Win 5-4 (Counted as loss due to red card given to Team 1983 for touching opposing tower)

Quarterfinals Match 2, Win 5-2

Quarterfinals Match 3, Win 8-0

Semifinals Match 1, Lose 3-4

Semifinals Match 2, Lose 4-5

Note from webmaster: Access to the Internet at this regional is broken, so bear with us as we try to update our scores as often as we can. The team is looking great this year, and we'd all like to thank Doug Bertain, Lars Rossen, Bill Brew, and Chris Tacklind for all the time they put into supervising us at the lab this past build season. Team 8!

As you all know, we are leaving to Portland, Oregon, this coming Wednesday, March 3rd. Be at the lab at noon or we will leave without you. Download the attachment if you need the itinerary.

Click Here For Competition Info

Hey All,

We survived the 10 hour power outage with only minimal damage – blew out a wireless router and a monitor – but the servers and all our files survived! Dan took the team over to his place (never lost power) last night for a work session in his engineering building. The robot of course also survived and is looking amazingly sleek. We had some issues with our soccer ball kicking mechanism but Blake Tacklind came through with what appears to be an award winning design for a trigger. It’s a very complicated looking series of gears but seems to handle the high torque requirements for a cross field shot. Rasmus Rossen, Max Najork and their new toy – the Tormach CNC mill are churning out parts for the robot like factory workers. Nick Clayton has been doing what he always does – writing awesome code – and setting up the robot autonomous mode with camera. John Xia is managing the team well with his very patient way and is currently revising our ball manipulators. This devise consists of two angled rolling cylinders that are designed to keep the ball in front of us for kicking. Connor has been a jack of all trades this year – keeping all the tools in tip top shape, training new lab workers in safety procedures and designing all the pneumatic parts. Eamon Winden has been churning out our manual mill parts like a pro and seems to be vying for a leadership role on the team.

Daniel Naymark and Sergey Smirnov are currently doing the voice-overs for our animation – due tonight by the way – our second one in two years! It looks like a winner if they can get it submitted in time. Max Najork is also about to submit our entry for the FIRST Webbie award – also due tonight by midnight – it’s going to be a late one I think.

Many others are hard at it here and I have to admit, this is a very hard working team. I can’t say enough about the food – it just keeps getting better! Thanks Jonna!! Thank you to all you parents. Bill Brew and Anne Jensen supervised the work-sessions last weekend and did a super job as well. Bill also remodeled our shipping crate to handle our tool shipment to Portland.

Stay pumped and be ready for ship!

We’ve finally reached build season, and after a long semester of teaching the new team members the ropes, we are all looking forward to the excitement of competition.

FIRST always manages to come up with games that none of us could have imagined, and this year’s challenge is no different. The steep bumps, the ramps leading to the goals, the tunnels, as well as many other things present unique design challenges. Already we are split on whether to build a 6 wheel drive train or a mecanum one. A plethora of different shooters have been suggested, and we are going through them looking at each of their strengths and weaknesses.

More to come as we get further into the season, and to all the Paly team members out there, don’t forget to come to the lab every day!

Welcome to another fantastic year with the PALY Robotics team!

The PALY robotics team has had to readjust this year, as several key team members graduated. However our prodigious Nick Clayton has won us our award for excellence in programming, and remains our Programming Captain this year. Our new PR captain is John Xia, a senior who's been with the team for 3 years. Rasmus Rossen is our new Build Captain, so that has been an easy transition since he and Eric "Vlad" Vicenti were good friends. Our new Animation Captain is Daniel Naymark, who has plenty of talent. Most of the animation team graduated last year, so it has been a more difficult transition.

All of our alumni from last year found good universities at which they are studying engineering. Among them are Stanford, Cal Poly, CAL, UCLA, and UC Davis.

Our team is going to visit and tour the Dreamworks campus, on October 8 after the meeting. We are hoping that it will be especially instructive to Daniel and the rest of the Animation team, as we will be partnering with the company this year. We will also be displaying last year's robot at the campus. We do not have all the details yet, but if you are a parent able to drive students on October 8, after school, please let us know!

A special thanks to Dreamworks and all the supportive parents.

Team 8!