Al's Blog-o-Sphere

…since I last posted here.

What have I done since then? Let’s see. The robotics team has built another robot. I got my Director’s number on the Geratol Net. I’ve gotten a month older…

That’s about it.

The robot for 2012 is done and looking good. We had relatively few problems programming it, though not totally problem-free, less than last year. The kids doing our programming are doing a great job and what we have is truly a joint project with us all putting our heads together to come up with working code. We looked good at the Penfield scrimmage a couple of days before the end of the build season. Two days of practice and fine-tuning at the Kenan center after that got things really humming. Continue Reading…

I haven’t been posting much here lately. Things have been keeping me busy enough that I haven’t really had much time to ponder what to put here.

One thing I’ve been really busy with has been our robotics team. I’ve posted about it here before and although there is lots more I could say about the whole program, this is the main aspect I’ve been personally involved with. Well, one of them…

A sample of the upper-left corner of one of four autonomous routines for the Warlocks robot. This determines what the robot does during the part of the match it operates on it’s own. This is one corner of one of four Autonomous modes. It doesn’t even fit on the computer screen all at once. The Teleop code that runs the robot when the drivers take over is just as complex.

Continue Reading…

For those of you who might have noticed I haven’t written anything here recently, here’s what has been going on.

The last two months have been spent pretty much all with robotics. So much so, that I haven’t been skiing this winter at all. One day out to Holimont has been all I have done.

The robotics team finished their build season and we worked furiously up until the last minute when we had to seal up the robot in a big plastic bag until our regional competition in Pittsburgh. We spent the last weekend working on it at the Kenan Center, our local recreational center, where they let us use some space to practice and work on the robot while school was closed for part of the spring break. Continue Reading…

This next Saturday, January 8th, 2011, will be the Kickoff for the 2011 season of the FIRST Robotics Competition.

In case you’re not familiar with this program, you can learn a lot about it at the official website of FIRST or you can watch the kickoff ceremonies Saturday. I’d urge you to do both, if you’re curious about it. Continue Reading…